Most areas in Central Visayas remain under the general community quarantine except for Cebu City which is under the strictest measure, the Department of Health said yesterday.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire made the pronouncement after a report circulated that Central Visayas was placed under the enhanced community quarantine over the increasing number of COVID-19 cases.
“Wala pong katotohanan iyan. Ang Region 7 is still under GCQ except for Cebu City, which is under ECQ, and Talisay City, which is under modified ECQ,” Vergeire said.
The Health official said that they are investigating the “clustering of cases” in Central Visayas, particularly in Cebu City.
Based on the DoH COVID-19 tracker, there are now 4,832 cases in Central Visayas. Most of them were detected in Cebu City with 3,216. The region ranked second with the most number of cases, behind National Capital Region with 14,226 cases.
Vergeire noted that they observed that the number of fresh cases in Central Visayas has “exceeded NCR in some of the days that we have reported.”
There were 481 fresh cases reported last Thursday, 273 from Central Visayas and 120 from the National Capital Region. The rest — 88 — were from other regions.
Vergeire said that there were some “assumptions” on why the cases in Central Visayas continue to spike.
“So maraming mga assumptions na lumalabas these past few days. Unang-una ‘yung sinasabi nila yung pagpasok ng returning overseas Filipinos and Overseas Filipino Workers, ‘yung pagtaas din ng kaso sa mga jail, and of course ‘yung sinasabi nilang expanded testing,” she said.
Vergeire said that it can be due to the “proactive” contact tracing and expanded testing of the local government units in Central Visayas. (Analou de Vera)
