EDITORIAL - Good news indeed, but don’t let your guard down

After observing a decrease in the number of active COVID-19 cases in their area, barangay captain Michael Gacasan of Guadalupe, Cebu City, said they have rescinded the order for their residents to stay at home every Sunday.

“As of now, mag-single digit na mi sige. Pila na ka days, sagunson, not like before nga 30, 40 kada adlaw,” he was quoted as saying in a report in this newspaper.

Along with this development, all establishments there can also now open on Sundays. No doubt providing relief to those who operate certain services or are in need of said services in the area.

This is a good development. However, people must still be wary. Even as the stay-at-home order is no more, it should still be best for people to stay home if they have no urgent business outside.

And this goes not just for the biggest and most populous barangay in Cebu City, but for the rest of the city as well. And not just for Sundays, but for the rest of the other days as well.

The risk isn’t just plain SARS-COV-2, which causes COVID-19, anymore. There are now more variants. Some of these variants are deadlier, more contagious, and, if reports from France are to be believed, not detectable by standard RT-PCR testing at all.

And while the mentality is that those more virulent, contagious, and undetectable variants will never get here, we should remember that we --at least some of our leaders-- never expected COVID-19 would ever make it to our shores.

Again, many of us should be reminded that the virus needs warm bodies moving from place to place to thrive. It cannot spread if someone who has it doesn’t go to interact with other people. Weaker strains will even eventually die in an infected person after some time after he or she is quarantined or isolated.

Make no mistake, this development in Guadalupe is positive news. However, developments and reports like these have the tendency to put people too much at ease, to the point where they let their guard down. And when they let their guard down we all know what happens next. It’s been a recurring scenario lately.