Mayor Sara Duterte has directed all 182 barangays in the city to establish their respective isolation facilities within their area.
In an interview with Davao City Disaster Radio on Tuesday, she said that she has given barangay officials until May 1 to scout for isolation facilities.
“These facilities in the city villages will be managing cases that need to be tested but were not yet tested, those who were tested but are not yet recommended to be isolated in our COVID-19 centers and those people who have dwellings or houses that cannot be the patient’s isolation area based on their circumstances,” she said.
The city aims to add more facilities for COVID-19 cases and allow the barangays to manage these cases on their own, with the help of health experts. The facilities will serve as isolation areas for persons awaiting their results.
However, she reminded barangay officials to avoid converting public schools into isolation facilities. The barangay will also supervise the facilities as the city only has limited doctors.
“Due to the limitation of the number of doctors, we cannot possibly have one doctor per barangay as we have 182 city barangays in total. It will cost many doctors,” she said.
But the city mayor said they will be trained by the City Health Office (CHO) on how to operate the isolation areas and manage the patients.
Meanwhile, Duterte urged all people experiencing symptoms to voluntarily seek medical assistance immediately.
“To those who have the symptoms already, it is better for you to decide to submit yourselves to the doctor and get checked. This will make our work easier,” she said.
According to the Department of Health XI, most infected people will likely develop mild to moderate symptoms such as fever, tiredness, and dry cough, while others may experience aches and pains, nasal congestion, runny nose, sore throat, and diarrhea.
Duterte said people with these symptoms submit themselves to the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) for a check-up.
“They can also go directly to SPMC so they can be tested. But before that, they will be interviewed because the doctors will determine you as a case or as a patient. So you will be asked for details before the doctor will give the go signal for testing,” she said.
Lockdown needed
Duterte said there was a need to lock down Block 69, Purok 8 of Barangay 21-C on Tuesday, affecting 198 households, due to the high risk of transmission.
So far, the DOH team has conducted random testing in barangays Leon Garcia, 21-C, 23-C, Daliao in Toril, and the adjacent areas. The random testing in these areas yielded four cases.
“If the barangay officials are not proactive, policemen and Task Force Davao will have the difficulty to implement quarantine rules,” she said.
As of Tuesday, Cluster 1 still has the most number of cases with 48, Cluster 2 has nine cases, Cluster 3 has 27 cases, Cluster 4 has six cases, Cluster 5 has six cases and Cluster 6 has three cases. She also noted that some of these cases have recovered already, but will still be included in the number counting.
