A city councilor revealed that two proposed quarantine facilities are being developed in the city.
Councilor Mary Joselle Villafuerte said the Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Malagos, Baguio District and the evacuation center in Los Amigos, Tugbok District are being considered for this purpose.
“This is for preparedness and precaution,” Villafuerte, committee chair on health, told reporters in an interview.
She said this is a response to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the country, already declared as a state under public health emergency.
The Department of Health (DOH), Villafuerte said, has ordered local government units to prepare quarantine areas in their respective places. The councilor said she has been tasked and instructed by DOH Usec. Abdullah Dumama to prepare quarantine areas for repatriated Filipinos.
“We are expecting, in our condition nowadays of a heightened alert status, that there are Filipinos who will come from different places. Even if they will have no signs or symptoms, they still need to be quarantined,” she said.
“We should not turn away our fellow Davaoeños,” Villafuerte added. “They need to be taken care of, we need to accept them because they need our help.”
She said that each facility can cater around 50 individuals, following the one person one bathroom policy of the quarantine period.
Villafuerte said she has already informed her fellow legislators on the proposal.
“Usec. Dumama told me to prepare the communities. Being the councilor in the third district, I already shared this to my colleagues, that we will continue doing activities in the barangay. We can conduct them, if we may, in the areas where proposed quarantine areas are to be placed, to prepare the people there, that if there are repatriated we need to accept them, take care of them. Let us not be afraid,” she said.
Villafuerte has urged the public to cooperate in the city’s drive against COVID-19.
