(Image courtesy of PIO Negros Occidental)
BACOLOD CITY – Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said on Tuesday the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) has denied his request to place Negros Occidental under a general community quarantine (GCQ) category.
Lacson said regional director Juan Jovian Engeniero of the Department of the Interior and Local Government-Western Visayas informed him that the latest active cases logged by the province do not qualify for the escalation of its current status of modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) to GCQ.
“I was able to talk to him and he did say it was denied simply because the numbers do not require a GCQ. For example, the doubling rate in two weeks. Ours is 107 percent, for a GCQ to be declared it should be 200 percent. It was denied because it’s not necessary,” he said.
As of April 12, Negros Occidental has a total of 8,600 cases, of which 1,515 are active, the highest in Western Visayas.
Although Lacson accepted the decision, he still pointed out that in denying his request, “it seems the IATF did not allow us to be proactive”.
“My point here is, why wait for 200 percent? Why not take drastic or stricter quarantine measures to try to address the problem. Why wait for the problem to reach that level. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to them (that even though) the numbers that qualified us for MGCQ, we know what’s happening here on a daily basis,” he said.
He said he will no longer seek a reconsideration, but the provincial government will instead impose stricter measures especially in leisure travel, which could include the closure of resorts in the province for two weeks.
His request for escalation to GCQ was endorsed by the Western Visayas Regional Inter-Agency Task Force (RIATF) and the Regional Task Force (RTF) for Covid-19 in a joint resolution approved on April 10. (PNA)
