General Santos City Mayor Ronnel Rivera. (PNA GenSan photo)
GENERAL SANTOS CITY – The city government is considering lifting several movement restrictions as it hopes to further reduce the local transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) by next month.
Mayor Ronnel Rivera said Monday easing the quarantine rules might include removing the “no movement” policy on Sundays.
However, Rivera made it clear that the City Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases has not yet decided on the matter, contrary to reports circulating on social media in recent days.
The mayor said the task force has set at least three criteria to determine whether the city is ready to relax the remaining movement restrictions and control measures.
“We set a target that by December our active cases, testing positive rate, and occupancy rate in hospitals and isolation facilities should be down to manageable levels,” Rivera said in an advisory.
He said the active cases should be below 200, and the city already accomplished that as of Sunday night with only 167 remaining cases.
A report released by the Department of Health-Region 12 said a total of 766 Covid-19 patients have already fully recovered in the area, out of the 973 confirmed cases recorded since March.
Rivera said they are targeting to lower the city's testing positivity rate to the national standard of 5 percent from the current 7 percent.
“We’re narrowing the gap, but we still need to test more people,” the mayor said.
The local government operates its own reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction testing center at the Dr. Jorge P. Royeca Hospital, and is now working to ramp up rapid antigen screening at the community level.
Earlier this month, the local government also opened its first community-based antigen testing facility in Barangay San Isidro, and is planning to open more in the coming weeks.
For the occupancy rate at the city hospital’s Covid-19 center, Rivera said they were able to reduce the figure as of last week to 50 percent, after “almost reaching 100 percent” when the city was under the general community quarantine from late August to Oct. 15.
The city is under modified GCQ until Dec. 31, based on the mayor's executive order last week.
Aside from the Sunday lockdown, the local government currently prohibits non-essential movement by residents and requires quick response or QR-coded passes for the purchase of food, medicine, and other important supplies.
In the meantime, Rivera urged residents to continually comply with the health and hygiene protocols such as the wearing of face mask and face shield, observance of safe physical distancing, and by staying home if they don’t have essential transactions in public places.
“We need a little more sacrifice. Let’s help each other achieve our targets so we can lift the majority of our restrictions by December. That’s the best give that we can give to our front-liners, family members and fellow residents,” he added. (PNA)
