BY ADRIAN P. NEMES III
About 50 employees of the Bacolod City government have been infected by the coronavirus disease 2019, as of Monday, City Administrator Em Ang, who is also the executive director of the Emergency Operations Center, said.
Ang said she is getting the names and other information of these employees, like the offices they are assigned to, and she is verifying the actual number of those who tested positive for Covid, as of yesterday.
She said the family members of some of these employees were also infected and have been isolated.
Despite the increase in the number of employees infected, the Bacolod Government Center will not be closed down since it will be difficult to temporarily stop operations at this time, Ang also said.
Since the number of employees who have been infected had increased, the Bacolod government adopted various working schemes, with some employees doing their jobs from home while others are on shifting schedules.
BGC GROUNDS BARRED
Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia had earlier barred the public from staying at the BGC grounds as precautionary measure against the further spread of the disease.
As of yesterday, Bacolod had 81 new cases, mostly local transmissions, records from the Department of Health Region 6 showed.
Ang stressed that people need not be alarmed when they go to BGC because the building is being disinfected regularly. She said that the employees who fell ill with Covid might have acquired the virus outside the workplace, or from the people who visit the BGC.
Meanwhile, 50 additional frontline healthcare workers have received their second dose of Sinovac at the vaccine rollout at the BGC Wednesday.
A total of 2,334 frontline healthcare workers have already completed their two doses of vaccine in the continuous vaccination rollout of the city.
HALL OF JUSTICE CLOSED
Executive Judge Joseph Javier, meanwhile, announced the closure of the Hall of Justice in Bacolod from noon yesterday until noon today.
In a memorandum, Javier said the closure was imposed on the verbal instructions of Court Administrator Midas Marquez to give way for the disinfection of the HOJ. He said all the physically closed courts can be reached through the judiciary hotlines and email addresses posted in the Supreme Court website, adding that the Regional Trial Court office of the Clerk of Court shall maintain the necessary skeleton staff to attend to urgent matters.*
