Baguio on MGCQ June 1; addressing returning folks

CITY HALL BEAT

Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY -- Mayor Benjamin Magalong on May 28 assured the city's readiness to transition from General Community Quarantine (GCQ) to Modified GCQ status ,if approved, beginning June 1.

The mayor said that as of May 28, the city has a total of 32 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, 29 of whom recovered and two active presently confined one of whom a Philippine National Police member who tested positive a few days after arriving in the city while its lone fatality had an underlying condition.

The mayor said the City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (CESU) Head Dr. Donnabel Panes had informed that the city's case doubling time (DT) is 24.4 days as opposed to the DT information relayed to the national Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) of nine days.   Moreover the city's Time Varying Reproduction Number is 0.877. 

                The DT is the time it takes to double the number of cases while the reproduction number is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population.

City Health Officer Rowena Galpo said the city's current reproduction number of .8 is less than one meaning there is a low chance to transmitting the disease in the city.

Apart from the encouraging data on COVID-19 incidence, the mayor cited current accomplishments in support systems like the recent strengthening of the city's testing capacity with the addition of six PCR machines and two automated RNA extraction machines at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC) and the institutionalized contact tracing system which has been effective in identifying contacts and areas of concentration of the disease.

There are also the health and safety mechanisms put in place for the various sectors as they start reopening and the well-placed systems on returning overseas and local residents and workers with enough health and safety mechanisms and protocols like online registration, triage system and quarantine and isolation centers to ensure disease control.

“With these safety mechanisms in place, we have an added assurance of swift implementation of disease management procedures as we begin to ease up restrictions in the business sector,” the mayor said.

Another factor is the innate discipline of the Baguio residents evident since the ECQ.

“I say it with immense pride that the stability and progress of our city is realized through the shared responsibility and cooperation of the city government, our uniformed personnel and our citizens,” he said.

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City government officials led by Mayor Magalong are hopeful that the city will be able to handle the surge of returning Overseas Filipino Workers and stranded residents and local workers with well-placed systems proactively put up.

This as the country braces for the surge in the arrival of OFWs in the coming weeks and as local government units open borders to returning residents and local workers with the easing up of community quarantines.

Both present challenges in efforts to control the spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic.

President Duterte on May 25 ordered local government units to open their doors to the repatriated OFWs numbering around 60,000.

Magalong said the city had been strategic in this area and as early as April put in place a management system consisting of containment facility, triage and disease management scheme for the OFWs and a Returning Baguio Residents system for local residents and workers with strategies for online entry, triage and infection management.

              The OFW facility set up at the Teachers’ Camp which initially offered 129 beds under the management of the Dept. of Health and the City Health Services Office has processed a total of 260 returning OFWs from Baguio City, Benguet Province and Mt. Province since April 17 in collaboration with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration Cordillera headed by Regional Director Manuela Peña and the Benguet and Mt. Province LGUs.

Peña lauded the efforts of the three localities in complying with the guidelines of the line agencies in managing the entry of the workers.

“The Teachers’ Camp Quarantine led by the LGU Baguio City started before this surge and sea of repatriation of OFWs. I take pride that among the 17 regional offices, we are the only one that has this! LGU-led with the cluster of Baguio, Benguet and Mt. Province in an inter-agency approach involving the local DOH, Philippine National Police and of course my small OWWA office. Salamat Mayor nag-uumpisa pa lang, nakaisa na tayo,” Peña told Mayor Magalong.

The Dept. of Interior and Local Government Regional Office under Regional Director Marlo Iringan is now sorting the data on the number of OFWs who will come home to the city, Benguet and Mt. Province.

The RBR system on the other hand is being handled in cooperation with the Baguio City Police Office under Director P Col. Allen Rae Co.

The mayor said he insisted that the RBR process crafted according to the city’s requirements be incorporated in the PNP procedure for Local Stranded Individuals to ensure its smooth run.

“It is our city and we know what we need and what needs to be done to make these systems work. We believe our BCPO can do it but since the task is beyond their core competencies, they will need our assistance,” the mayor said.

For the RBR system, the city readied an online system to control the number of entrants and prevent overwhelming the triage and isolation and medical facilities and ensure that suspected and infected persons are properly managed to avoid spread of the disease.

As of Friday, the city has processed a total of 4,897 RBR applications.

The mayor appealed to stranded residents to follow the system and to bear with the delays because of the bulk of applications being received.

“We have to do this to ensure that your arrival is managed properly by way of segregating at once those suspected and probable cases and contain the transmission. We want you to come home to a safe city so please let us cooperate,” he said.