SAGADA, Mountain Province – The municipal government asserted it will continue to enforce the prohibition of people coming from areas with confirmed Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) cases from entering the municipality following the extension of the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine up to the end of the month.
Mayor James Pooten said that the municipal government will also maintain the existing quarantine checkpoint along the Dantay-Sagada road, particularly at the Pegeo area, to check on the people wanting to enter the municipality so that those from the areas with confirmed COVID-19 cases will automatically be compelled to undergo the required 14-day quarantine period in the designated isolation sites in the area.
He disclosed that the established isolation tents in the Pegeo checkpoint can accommodate a maximum of 15 individuals at one time although the said number had not been reached since the start of the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine and municipal officials are confident they can handle the situation as those who will be going out of their residences will be controlled by the different local governments as only those with emergency needs are the ones that are authorized to be outside their homes.
However, Pooten admitted that those personnel managing the checkpoints have a problem in dealing with the authorized persons outside their residences, especially those delivering food products to the municipality, because these people insist to do so amidst the prevailing policy that drivers and helpers need to transfer the products to the trucks of their clients and they will not be allowed to enter considering the threats that they might be ill.
The municipal chief executive claimed he plans to write Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez, who is the designated implementer of the government’s COVID-19 response, to clarify this concern of the municipality of allowing truckers coming from COVID-19 affected areas to enter the municipality as this might derail the gains made in ensuring the municipality is COVID-19 free to date.
While truckers and drivers undergo the needed dis-infection from established sanitation tents near the quarantine checkpoints, Pooten claimed that concerned stakeholders worked hard to maintain the COVID-19 free status of the municipality over the past four weeks and they do not want people from unnecessarily entering the municipality that could eventually ruin the gains of their efforts of preventing the spread of the contagious illness in the municipality.
He asserted that there are some gray areas in the guidelines of the inter-agency task force on the management of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in the management of checkpoints, especially in dealing with authorized persons outside their residences, like preventing people who are already ill from entering their area of jurisdiction right at the quarantine checkpoints.
Pooten called on the residents to monitor their neighborhood for individuals who had been allowed to enter their municipality even without undergoing the required 14-day quarantine period at the checkpoint area to ensure that they are not carriers of any illness that will compromise their health.
By Hent