By Dolly Yasa
BACOLOD City – Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson called on Negrenses to act as if “we are under GCQ (General Community Quarantine)” despite the denial of the Inter-Agency Task Force to elevate the province’s quarantine status.
The Department of Health Western Visayas has classified Negros Occidental as a COVID-19 “high risk” area, due to the surge in active cases for more than a month now.
Cases surged after the IATF declared that swab testing was no longer mandatory upon arrival in any point of entry.
The governor said that he and local government executives had been asking the IATF to place Negros Occidental under the GCQ, as he declared that the province is no longer safe.
But Lacson said he got no reaction from the task force until now.
With Negros Occidental classified as a high-risk area, Lacson said “we’ve always been saying that they should allow LGUs to decide the community quarantine classification in their areas.”
Lacson lamented that active cases had been in triple digits in the past weeks.
He also pointed out that the imposition of curfew hours, from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., helps a lot in curbing the spread of the virus, adding that, for the first time, the province had more recoveries than new cases on April 20.
Negros Occidental logged 2,233 active cases, excluding the 691 in Bacolod City as of Tuesday.
Lacson also said that he will continue to impose the curfew hours, and allow LGUs to close resorts in their areas, to prevent the increase of Covid-19 cases.
