South Cotabato Shuts Border Due To Rise Of COVID-19 Cases
SOUTH COTABATO – South Cotabato recently shut its borders to outsiders starting Tuesday as there is a surge of COVID-19 cases there.
This is due to the ease of traveling restrictions, according to a report from Inquirer.
The province’s governor Reynaldo Tamayo issued the order as he cited that the “impending threat” of local transmission could heavily affect the healthcare system in the province and the lives of local health frontliners.
“In a bid to curb the growing number of COVID-19 cases and to stop the spread of the disease, the province deemed it proper to curtail the movement of people going to the province by imposing a border lockdown,”
The governor said, however, that those involved in the medical profession, peace and order, rescue and COVID-19 prevention interventions, civil servants, media, public utilities, and those seeking immediate medical attention are not allowed to come to the city.
The provincial government would also require medical personnel and other essential workers and frontliners working outside South Cotabato to undergo the mandatory 14-day quarantine upon their return here, he said.
Tamayo said that he fears that the battle against the pandemic due to the dwindling supply of cartridges which was used for the RT-PCR testing at a local laboratory operated by a private hospital that was accredited by the Department of Health.
Based on the report, if the local lab would run out of cartridges, the wswab samples of suspected and symptomatic COVID-19 patients would be sent to two facilities: Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City or the Southern Philippines Medical Center in Davao City.
The new six COVID-19 cases in Region 12 (SOCCSKSARGEN) as of 6 PM Monday are from South Cotabato, according to data from the Center for Health Development of DOH-12.
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