Coordination between Negros Occ. and Bacolod City LGUs vs. Covid-19 urged

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Negros Occidental Provincial Government consultant Alfredo Benitez called on the Bacolod City Government to have a unified fight against the highly infectious coronavirus with the province.

Benitez said he hopes Bacolod will also conduct its own testing to detect the spreaders, although he said, “they are not coordinating with us.”

Benitez said the recent surge of Covid-19 cases both in the province and in its capital city “is because we did not stop the spread of the virus.”

“It is the reason why there is a rise of cases,” the former congressman pointed out.

Naturally and logically, we need to create a system to detect the spreaders, Benitez said.

He said the ongoing testing conducted by the provincial government using Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) aims to detect the spreaders.

The RAT is 94 percent accurate, he said.

The provincial government conducted contact tracing in the cities of Silay, Talisay, La Carlota, Himamaylan and Kabankalan, as well as municipalities of Toboso, Salvador Benedicto, Pulupandan, San Enrique and Binalbagan, using the number of cases and daily attack rate as basis.

Individuals who tested positive during rapid testing were isolated and managed.

Atty. Rayfrando Diaz, Provincial Administrator said the Provincial Health Office (PHO) bought 6,500 rapid antigen testing kits for their expanded contact tracing activities, and will procure 10,000 more testing kits for utilization in the different local government units.

This is in addition to the antigen testing kits provided by the Department of Health (DOH) to the provincial government, Diaz added.*