EDITORIAL - Yes, we should still be wary

The good news we received recently was that Cebu City has already flattened the curve of new infections. The announcement came from Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) deputy chief implementer Melquiades Feliciano who shared the news last Thursday.

In the context of this pandemic, health experts define flattening the curve to mean that infections have been slowed to a rate that becomes manageable by the local or national health systems.

So as far as the IATF is concerned, our infections are no longer beyond control and can now be efficiently handled by our local medical infrastructure or system.

Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella said we should not get overly confident or distracted.

“We should never aggrandize this achievement... It should serve as a challenge to all of us. We should not flaunt it, on the other hand, it should serve as a challenge because the virus is still with us," Labella is quoted as saying.

And he is absolutely right. Just because we seem to have made some headway in the fight against COVID-19 doesn’t mean we should let our guard down. We cannot afford to get complacent when it comes to securing ourselves and our families against the coronavirus

The news doesn’t have a shortage of cautionary tales. Just look at all those places that faced the virus and thought they had it beat, only to have cases of COVID-19 back.

Berlin is recording more cases across various age groups while Spain and France are also seeing an increase in infections. Closer to us here in Asia, Seoul is currently experiencing a resurgence in cases while Japan’s medical infrastructure is struggling to cope with their COVID-19 patients.

The general consensus is that the haste to normalize life and business in these places, and many others, led to the new coronavirus cases. So we must be careful not to fall into this trap even as we struggle to get our lives, jobs, and businesses back.

Our flattening of this curve is a small victory we cannot afford to squander. The consequences of doing so are just unthinkable.