IT IS THE most welcome decision by Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio and her team of advisers on the city’s fight against CoViD 19 to have the vendors of Bankerohan and Agdao public markets swabbed for the possibility of CoronaVirus Disease infection.
There is no doubt that public markets , especially that in Bankerohan and Agdao, are the most potential mass transmission areas because of the number of people frequenting these places and those who are right there vending whatever essential food items needed by the people for their daily existence.
The move could have been triggered when some of the vendors in Agdao market were tested positive of the virus recently, And considering that for now there is reduced restriction as to the number of people allowed to go inside markets since the use of food and medicine (FM) passes is temporarily suspended and in its lieu QR code comes in as the sole requirement, then public markets become fair game for any Tom, Dick and Harry to go to any time of the day except if one is clearly in his or her senior years.
We only hope that the result of the swab test on the vendors of Bankerohan which was expected yesterday will not indicate that CoViD is prevalent in the majority of the vendors. If it is, then the effectiveness of the QR code in tracing those who have close contact with the infected vendors would be put to its acid test.
Earlier, we have manifested our apprehension on the suspension of the use of the FM Pass to limit the number of people going out. We believe that the use of the FM pass would have easily deterred the people from going out of their residences as they can only be authorized to go out for buying medicine and going to the market or elsewhere based on the last digit of the number of the FM pass.
Meaning, they’ll be restrained on certain days thus effectively controlling the number of people outside of residences. As to the QR Code, almost everybody, if not all, has it. Hence those with QR code will have every day open for them to go out of their houses.
Anyhow, even as we welcome the new measure of the city having vendors in the two main markets swab-tested, we can only hope that it can help make its aggressive community testing succeed. We are also looking forward that this scheme will prevent a repeat of the surge of new CoViD cases in the city like what happened late last year until early this year when Davao City was consistent on the top 5 of places with the highest number of new infections.
At least today, despite reports of new cases the city is still absent in the list of top new infection producers that are mostly places under the so-called NCR Bubble +.
A huge THANK YOU is in order for Mayor Sara and her team including all the religiously working medical front liners in the city.
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According to the Police, and even by the Catholic Church authorities, the celebration of the Holy Week in the whole of Mindanao was generally peaceful. There was only one untoward incident that might be considered as some kind of a blot in the Holy Week season. And that was the explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) in downtown Cotabato City on the early evening of Holy Thursday.
Fortunately though there was no casualty in terms of lives lost although two were reported injured slightly. Another IED was found not far from the blast site but again the police was able to find it before it exploded. Thus, damage was prevented and the activities of people in the city related to the Holy Week commemoration continued as if nothing had happened.
The incident though had caused its ripples to reach as far as Davao City. As a result thereof, law enforcement authorities had to place the entire city in a heightened alert level. The measure was definitely a welcome one. As the saying goes, what is used is making the sign of the cross when it is done after or right at the moment that a blast of lightning strikes.
In other words, the law enforcement people could never be wrong if they make adjustments on their security preparation since it would be disastrous if they remain complacent in their guard.
Isn’t it “better prepared than be sorry?”
