COVID-19 situation in Cebu greatly improved, quarantine facility now suspended

 CEBU CITY – The Bayanihan Cebu Sacred Heart School (SHS) Field Center, a COVID-19 quarantine facility in Cebu City had suspended its operations effective October 1 due to the declined trend in COVID-19 cases in Cebu for the past three weeks now.

According to the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas (OPAV) that the suspension of operations of one of the COVID-19 quarantine facilities here is a welcome development.  “This development shows a marked improvement in Cebu’s anti COVID-19 campaign,” OPAV secretary Michael Lloyd Dino said in his media statement Monday.

Dino said that early on OPAV engaged multi-sector coordination efforts in the fight against the pandemic.  It rallied government and private sectors to come up with measures to prepare for the projected increase in the number of cases that resulted in the creation of the Bayanihan Cebu PH.

The 48-bed Bayanihan SHS Field Center facility was built to address the congestion in Cebu hospitals caused by the rising cases of COVID-19, OPAV Assistant Secretary Jonji Gonzales reported during the Laging Handa Network Briefing News.

The collective efforts have paid off, Dino added, and the contribution of various sectors made this happen.   He also lauded business sector, the medical frontliners, the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines for their valuable contribution to the anti-COVID-19 campaign in the Visayas region.

Following this development Dino thanked the Chairman of Bayanihan Cebu PH, Edmun Liu for its continued support to the government in the fight against the virus that made Cebu a model for other cities in the country in terms of managing the COVID-19 crisis at the local level.

“We have to give recognition to the private sector especially the businessmen who always make their initiatives possible for the general public. This is a very good example of a public private partnership,” Dino stated.

DOH-7 has reported that Central Visayas now has a recovery rate of 89.28 percent as of October 8. It has a capacity utilization rate of 13.3 percent, 12.1 percent for regular COVID beds and 22.5 percent of ICU COVID beds.

The availability of different COVID-19 health care requirements is: 78 percent for ICU beds; 67 percent for isolation beds; 70 percent for ward beds and 74 percent for ventilators, the DOH-7 added.

The Bayanihan Cebu SHS facility that started accepting patients in the first week of May had 99 recovered COVID-19 patients and 179 recovered patients at the other Bayanihan Cebu IEC Field Center facility as of October 4.

For now, the Bayanihan SHS facility endorsed the remaining COVID-19 patients for their continued recovery to the Bayanihan Cebu IEC Field Center at Pope John Paul II Ave., Cebu City and to maximize the efforts of the medical healthcare workers of both quarantine facilities to treat COVID-19 patients in just one quarantine facility.

Bayanihan Cebu PH team explained that it would reactivate the SHS facility if the need would arise and if there is an increase in the number of COVID-19 patients that have to be quarantined, in the meantime a minimal number of staff will still be assigned to the closed facility for its proper maintenance. (Photos: Bayanihan SHS Quarantine Facility)