DILG sends more troops to Cebu to enforce lockdown

MANILA, Philippines — More police and military troops would be deployed to Cebu City after it was put on lockdown amid the increase in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said yesterday, as he noted the need to control the movement of people under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in the city.

“The entire Cebu City is on lockdown, so it’s under ECQ, and we will add more police and troops from the Armed Forces of the Philippines so that they can help, because we see that there is really a need for people to be quarantined in their homes, given that there are some 4,000 active cases here and it keeps rising,” Año said in Filipino in an interview with ABS-CBN’s TeleRadyo.

The chief of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said they want to avoid a situation where not only hospital facilities are congested but bodies are also piling up, similar to Metro Manila in early April.

He noted that healthcare facilities are likely to be strained, thereby increasing the likelihood of infection among frontline workers, which the government is trying to avoid.

Cebu City was tagged as a “special concern area” due to the rise in COVID-19 cases that prompted President Duterte on Monday night to assign Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, a retired military general, to oversee the response situation in the area and to use all powers of the government’s task force to contain the virus.

Aside from Cebu City, Año said he and COVID-19 chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. would also assess the situation in Tacloban City and Leyte province due to the surge in cases there.

Año added that they would also look into allegations that the return of locally stranded individuals (LSIs) and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) led to the spike of COVID-19 cases in those areas.

“There was a sudden surge there… so we will also talk to local government officials there and we will look at the situation on the ground and what we can do to help Leyte,” he said.

The DILG secretary said they want stricter regulations on returning LSIs and OFWs to their home provinces, especially those who slip through unnoticed like hitching rides on cargo ships.

“While we’re organizing these LSIs who will be brought to the province, there are those who slip through – perhaps one or two of them – who are not subjected to quarantine, that’s why we will be stricter now on LSIs,” he said.

No martial law

There is no martial law in Cebu City despite the deployment of soldiers to enforce quarantine measures, Malacañang said yesterday.

The southern city reverted to the strictest lockdown scenario last June 15 as its healthcare capacity is in danger of being overwhelmed by the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

The designation of Cimatu and the stronger presence of government troops have sparked fears that martial law will be declared in Cebu City, which now has more than 4,400 cases of the new coronavirus.

“This is not martial law. This has been decided upon by the Supreme Court, and this is as far as enforcing the ECQ in Cebu (City) is concerned,” Roque told ABS-CBN News Channel.

“Normally, we have the police enforcing it but if the police is not enough, then the Armed Forces can also enforce the lockdown,” he added.

Roque said the SC ruled in Sanlakas versus Executive Secretary that the government can order soldiers to patrol shopping malls and assume other civilian duties.

Only essential services like healthcare and food production, export-oriented businesses and business process outsourcing are allowed to operate in areas under ECQ.

Now that Cebu City is under ECQ, only one member per household is allowed to go out to buy essentials, according to the Palace spokesman.

“(If it’s) just too many that’s allowed to go out... that defeats the purpose of an ECQ,” he said, adding that about 200,000 residents in the city have quarantine passes.

Roque said Cimatu is expected to make recommendations and to implement what he thinks should be done in one week.

Duterte, Roque said, would issue executive orders to give legal validity to Cimatu’s actions, if necessary.

“(Cimatu) has to do whatever has to be done. There’s now a hierarchy of laws that we’re following here. And, of course, the mandate of General Cimatu comes from the President himself backed up by an executive order. He can exercise all powers that the President can exercise; he has been the beneficiary of delegated authority from the President,” Roque said.

“He gets to exercise all the extraordinary powers of the Office of the President in dealing with the pandemic in Cebu City,” he added.

‘Emerging hotspots’

The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday announced that Cebu City and six other areas in the Visayas – Cebu province, Ormoc City, Southern Leyte, Leyte and Samar – are “emerging hotspots” for COVID-19.

“Many of the cases that we have recorded recently are from Regions 7 and 8. It means that the cases there are increasing; therefore, we need to focus more attention there to stop the spread of the virus,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in Filipino at a press briefing.

Vergeire, however, gave assurance that the DOH and the national government had already deployed assistance to these places to contain the spread of the disease.

Overall, Vergeire maintained that based on the national epidemic curve as of last Tuesday, the rise in cases nationwide is “gradual.”

“Our current health system can still cope with the rise in cases. Our national daily cases are still stabilized but we expect the cases to increase as we are gradually opening our economy and easing restrictions,” she said.

The DOH official underscored that the increase in cases has not yet reached the point where the healthcare system has been ovewhelmed.

The country’s testing capacity has also increased but the “positivity rate” of those tested continues to go down, according to Vergeire.

Data showed that as of June 20, the DOH was able to do 594,499 tests, including 86,191 tests performed this week alone.

In the past seven days, the average daily tests done were 12,348.

Of all those tested, those found positive was equivalent to the nationwide rate of 6.9 percent.

“This can be a sign that the testing that we are doing is enough and the transmission of the virus has been reduced,” Vergeire said.

She claimed that the reproduction rate or “R naught” – “secondary cases” who acquired the virus of confirmed cases – has also gone down.

“For instance, at the start of the pandemic, our reproduction number was at two. This means that an infected person can transmit the virus to two other individuals,” Vergeire said. “But now, the reproduction rate is almost one.”

This means that there are fewer individuals getting the virus from an infected person, according to the DOH undersecretary.

The goal, she added, is to bring down the R naught to “less than one” to eliminate the virus from the country.

Cimatu’s appointment welcomed

The National Task Force against COVID-19 yesterday welcomed Cimatu’s appointment as overseer of the government’s COVID-19 response in Cebu City.

“We are here to find out how we can help Cebu and Region 7 and Secretary Cimatu,” National Task Force (NTF) against COVID-19 chairman and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said during a press conference held in Cebu City on Tuesday.

“We shall not lose sight of why we’re here: that’s to defeat COVID-19,” Lorenzana added, as he underscored the importance of the NTF and Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ visit to the southern city.

“Secretary Cimatu’s appointment is proof that President Duterte cares deeply for Cebu and its people,” Galvez said.

He added that the NTF leadership fully supports the designation of Cimatu as the task force’s overseer in the city, as he noted that the environment secretary would provide a major boost in the implementation of COVID-19 prevention and mitigation measures.

Members of the NTF and IATF are in Cebu to meet with local chief executives in the province as well as visit several hospitals to evaluate health conditions in the area.

Warming up to his new role, Cimatu said he is set to hold a dialogue with barangay officials in areas with high numbers of active cases.

He added that Duterte’s directive was “to help the people of Cebu understand the problem. We have to do something to help and alleviate the lives of the people there.” Alexis Romero, Sheila Crisostomo, Jose Rodel Clapano