CEBU City was ordered reverted to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) on June 16, after two weeks of eased restrictions following nine weeks of ECQ. The announcement was made in the late evening of June 15, giving affected workers and businesses no time to prepare. Even Mayor Edgar Labella was stunned by the development. The climb in confirmed cases in the city had been noticed since early June — about 1,600 from June 3 to 15 — and the fact that Metro Cebu’s hospitals reportedly had all but reached their capacity were the compelling grounds for the national government to decide to revert Cebu City to ECQ status.
The possible reasons or factors behind the sudden ‘spike’ in Cebu City’s confirmed cases were not discussed when the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) made its recommendation to President Rodrigo Duterte, according to Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing 3rd (Sun Star Cebu, June 18). In other words, the number of tests conducted, testing strategy, intensity of contact tracing and backlog in processing of tests, among other factors, were not discussed.
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