The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) of Bacolod City is scheduled to conduct surveillance testing for the transport sector on November 28 to 30, as part of its ongoing mass testing to contain the spread of Covid-19.
EOC executive director and City Administrator Em Ang said their target will be drivers of food delivery services.
Ang said that for the last two weeks, there were private corporations that participated in the surveillance testing.
There was one company that conducted test on their 1,800 employees that yielded four confirmed positive cases, all coming from Bacolod, she said.
The Government Service and Insurance System also conducted surveillance testing on their employees that yielded zero positive cases, she added.
Mayor Evelio Leonardia said Bacolod is one of the local government units that continue to have surveillance testing. “We are more advanced compared to other cities,” he said.
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Ang said the systems and procedures of the Bacolod EOC, especially their approach to the pandemic, is being replicated and benchmarked by 19 LGUs – 15 from Negros Occidental, the provinces of Capiz and Aklan, and the cities of Pagadian and Davao in Mindanao.
The methods and procedures they have developed are contained in a manual that the cluster heads of the EOC have issued. Their procedures include testing, contact-tracing, extraction, isolation and re-integration, she said.
“We are happy to show our best practices with them knowing it will help and improve their response to COVID-19, in the same way that we have learned from the experience of other LGUs when we had a surge of Covid cases,” Ang said.
The number of Covid-19 cases has continued to decline in recent days. So they have control over fresh and new cases, she said.
“In short, the low positivity rate from our surveillance testing shows that we are able to contain now the spead of the virus in Bacolod. This will dispel rumors spread on social media that the reason why our cases are low is that we are not testing ” Ang added.*CGC
