Four areas in Negros Occidental and Bacolod City on four-day lockdown starting Friday

August 27, 2020

Four areas in Negros Occidental, along with Bacolod City, will be on a four-day lockdown starting Friday after cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have begun increasing.

As of August 26, Negros Occidental has 1, 083 COVID-19 cases with 572 recoveries and nine fatalities while Bacolod City has 1,177 cases with 288 recoveries and 14 deaths.

On August 25, Negros Occidental had the second highest COVID-19 in the country with 237 after the National Capital Region, the Department of Health (DOH) said.

In a press conference last week, capitol consultant and former Negros Occidental Re. Alfredo Benitez said the local government will implement a “timeout weekend” where there will be no movement at all.

“There will be a lockdown for four days, while we test everybody,” he said.

The time out weekend will be implemented starting 12:01 am of August 28 up to 11:59pm of August 31.

He said they are eyeing to test 10,000 individuals and the five COVID-19 laboratories in the province would be able to produce 2,500 test results per day.

“We need to catch up… we need to isolate the positive from infecting others… That’s why we would like to take a break,” he said.

“At the rate we are going, we will be the next region announced on national news… the next Cebu will now be us and we don’t want that to happen,” added Benitez.

Benitez said the province needed to strengthen its contact tracing, especially those with COVID-18-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat, coughing, and loss of taste and smell.

“Once we do an efficient contact tracing, we will test them,” he said.

Bacolod, which is not under the jurisdiction of the provincial government, will also implement a four-day lockdown.

In another press conference on Thursday, Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson said four areas will be placed under targeted lockdown for two days.

“The provincial government through the provincial governor has presided to issue an Executive Order no. 20-42, an Executive Order declaring time out weekend over the cities of Talisay, Silay, Bago and the municipality of Murcia on August 30 and 31,” Lacson said.

He said this is also for them to conduct testing in the areas.

 “Upon consultation with mayors, we have decided we will not do a total lockdown. Lockdown shall only be limited to specific areas within the respective government unit and does not include national roads,” he added.

The governor said the LGUs mentioned can come up with their own executive orders if they have specific issues they would like to manage within their respective government units.

According to Lacson, the infected COVID-19 persons in their province were mostly LSIs or locally stranded individuals.

He also reminded the public to avoid entering Bacolod City. Ella Dionisio/DMS