New quarantine protocols subject to appeal by LGUs
(Eagle News) — Malacanang released the community quarantine classifications for January next year which includes the retention of General Community Quarantine in Metro Manila, Davao City and eight other areas.
Aside from Metro Manila and Davao City, the following areas will remain under GCQ: Isabela, Santiago City, Batangas, Iloilo City, Tacloban City, Lanao del Sur, Iligan City, and Davao del Norte.
All other areas are still placed under Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ) which has less restrictions.
These qualifications will be effective from January 1 to 31, 2021.
President Duterte, however said, that this is still subject to local government units’ appeals.
-Danger of more infectious COVID variant hangs-
He also asked the public to remain in their homes as much as possible, particularly now that there is a more infectious COVID-19 strain, although this has not yet been confirmed to have entered the country.
The Philippine Genome Center has yet to complete its study of mutations of the virus, and the strain of the COVID-19 samples currently present in the country.
As of its latest bulletin on Dec. 22, it said that the United Kingdom COVID-19 virus variant, B.1.1.7, has not yet been found in COVID-19 samples submitted to its laboratories.
It said that the “local isolates are not closely related with the UK variant.”
As of Monday, Dec. 28, the Department of Health (DOH) said there were 766 additional cases, bringing the total cases in the country to 470,650.
The decrease in additional cases were due to the incomplete reports sent so far this holiday season, as well as the fewer number of people seeking tests for COVID-19.
“We are still continuing to see a decrease in cases over the holiday season (December 24 to January 4). This is due to the decreased number of patients being tested as many people want to celebrate the holidays at home,” the DOH said.
“For December 26, 175 laboratories were able to submit their reports through CDRS. 8 laboratories reported no operations for that day. Out of the 175 open laboratories, 27 reported seeing zero patients, while many others were observed to have decreased census. 14 laboratories did not submit any report and were called to attention for this lapse in reporting,” the DOH reported.
The cities and provinces with the highest additional cases were Davao City, Quezon City, Benguet, Laguna and Rizal.
Majority of the total cases have already recovered at 438,780, which is 93.2 percent of total cases in the country.
There are only 22,746 active cases in the country, which is 4.8 percent of total COVID-19 cases, DOH data showed.
(Eagle News Service)
