Dagupan has no plans

By Leonardo Micua

 

AS can be gleaned from the tally of the Provincial Health Office, the city of Dagupan is in dire trouble because of COVID-19. As of September 25, the city already logged 86 cases and still counting.

The most populous barangays—Pantal and Bonuan Gueset—of course, lead in the tally and many are wondering why city hall has not ordered a lockdown, not even in one neighborhood or sitio where two residents who are confirmed cases of COVID-19 live.  This exposed the fact that city officials do not really have any plan to stop the infection.

True, the sick may have been brought to the isolation facility of the LGU, if not in the Region 1 Medical Center, but what about the families who were in close contact with the infected ones? They need to be traced and isolated too so the infection would be contained in their own limited sphere.

Methinks, it is the LGUs’ call to lockdown an area or sitio where there are two or more positive cases of COVID-19. That is the rule I understand that was promulgated by the IATF. It is quite worrisome why Dagupan has not moved a muscle in this direction. I haven’t heard any lockdown ordered by the city government, even from its usual noisy factotums on radio.

But wait, in Bonuan Gueset where there are 12 active cases of COVID-19 as of September 23, it was the people themselves in a certain neighborhood that decided to isolate themselves from the compound of a family whose members were suspected to have been infected with COVID-19.

Without waiting for city hall to lock down that particular compound, the residents took it upon themselves to isolate themselves to prevent any of those suspected to be infected from straying into their neighborhood and spread the coronavirus. That’s what we call self-preservation.

If the city officials still don’t move their asses, the city will soon be swarming with walking positive cases that will spread the virus in many places some more. Then what?

And what’s this we heard from a city hall insider last September 22 that the Dagupan People’s Astrodome is already crowded with 30 COVID-19 patients, just short two of its usual 32 patients capacity. Our source said there are 32 modular tents installed inside the facility at presumably one tent per patient.

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In Pangasinan, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan adopted a cautious attitude on the request of SM Group of Companies and other establishments for a little adjustment of the curfew hours previously fixed in a provincial ordinance to start at 8:00 p.m. and to last till 5:00 A.M. the following day.

 On the advice of Governor Amado Espino III and the provincial IATF that today is not the time to disturb the status quo as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to soar.

 P/Colonel Red Maranan, police provincial director, supported the position of Governor Espino that the curfew hours from 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. need not be relaxed.

 Unlike the Dagupan SP that immediately reset the curfew to 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. at the instance of the city executive without conducting a public hearing, the Pangasinan legislative body refused to be swayed by the appeal of SM Group of Companies that operates malls in Rosales, Urdaneta  and Dagupan cities, It instead opted to listen to those in the know whether there is really an urgent need for the move. 

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Still in Dagupan City, we heard that Mayor Brian Lim has approved the request of consignacion owners of the Magsaysay Fish Market for a temporary moratorium on the entry of trucks delivering fish from Bulacan, Pampanga, Laguna and Rizal to Dagupan. This just confirmed our previous column item that it is the drivers and crew of these delivery trucks that transported the coronavirus to the fish market.

But the moratorium will only last up to October 5, which means that after that day, many will again be singing “happy days are here again” because many people in the city hall are reported to be making a killing by opening Dagupan’s door to out-of-town bangus.

How? Your guess is as good as mine.

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