By Froilan Gallardo, Special Correspondent .
A CAGAYAN de Oro Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office team fetched at least 19 returning Iligan residents at the Laguindingan airport and brought them to a hotel here for isolation.
At the Northern Mindanao Medical Center, officials said five Covid-19 patients, one of them had to be intubated, have arrived for treatment yesterday.
Mayor Oscar Moreno said the Iligan City government would be paying for the hotel of its returning residents that were fetched from Laguindingan airport Thursday.
“We will shoulder the food expenses as our way in helping Iligan cope with its crisis,” Moreno said.
The Department of Health in Region 10 reported that Iligan City has 53 Covid-19 local transmissions on Wednesday bringing the total number to 167 cases.
Moreno downplayed fears that coronavirus infections would spike in Cagayan de Oro as a result of bringing in returning residents of Iligan.
He said the Iligan residents would be under the tight watch from the medical teams of the City Health Office during the duration of their 14-day quarantine.
“Most returning residents from Manila are not infected with the virus. In fact, only a few percentage of them are found to be infected,” Moreno said.
He said the Iligan resident will be whisked away to a critical care unit once the medical team finds the patient is infected.
“There is no chance that they can infect Cagayan de Oro residents. They go straight to the hotel after they arrived in Laguindigan or Macabalan,” Moreno said.
Moreno said he had decided to approve the request of Iligan local government to rent hotels here to prevent the disease from spreading.
He said the Iligan local government can hardly cope with the infections in their city.
Moreno said he is afraid that if the Covid-19 cases in Iligan continue to rise, many patients will be brought to the NMMC, the major referral cases for the disease in Northern Mindanao.
“If the NMMC collapses, too, there is no other recourse but to impose a strict lockdown which would be detrimental to our economy,” he said.
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