This Week in Cebu (September 6 to 12, 2020)

In preparation for a possible rise COVID-19 cases in Mandaue City, the local government will set up a second COVID-19 testing facility at the San Roque Gym in Barangay Subangdaku. The city’s first testing facility at Norkis Park is for scheduled contact-traced persons, but the San Roque Gym facility will accept walk-ins.

Individuals who want to be tested will have to fill out a form and complete an online interview. Karlo Cabahug, head of the diagnostic and testing team, said that they will ramp up their operations and hire more medical technologists to conduct the tests. The said project is expected to be completed in two weeks, he added [1].

Two municipalities in the province have finally reopened tourist sites, offering tour packages for visitors. In the municipality of Cordova, The Dance with the Marine Life in Gilutongan Marine Sanctuary and Sing with the Mangroves in Nalusuan Island are the two tour packages that first opened. Meanwhile in Badian, the Kawasan Falls tourist attraction is being prepared for reopening but only for sightseeing. Tourists are advised to book online at www.discover.cebu.gov.ph before heading to the attraction sites [2].

Philippine Retailers Association (PRA) Spokesperson Robert Go is looking forward to business owners’ recovery of losses due to the pandemic beginning this month until December. Go is hopeful that Cebu’s local economy will show progress in consumer spending now that the entire province is under MGCQ. With that in mind, the PRA Cebu Chapter greenlights the Great Cebu Sale which will run from September 15 to October 31, 2020. The said event aims to invite consumers to start buying dry goods now that the products are on sale [3].

Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) will soon initiate the pilot pooled swab testing for COVID-19 in Cebu City. The University of Cebu Medical Center shall also conduct a pilot test of this system. With these, Cebu City will be the first city in Visayas to try the pooled testing project. According to Dr. Gerardo Aquino Jr., the medical center chief at the VSMMC, they will use the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method for the pooled testing, and it will be mainly used as a screening for testing employees, vendors, and drivers.

Pooled testing involves collecting samples of groups of five to ten individuals to allow laboratories to test more samples with lesser testing materials. Once a pooled sample shows a negative result, all the samples in that same pool will be considered negative. But if a sample turns positive, the samples in the group will need to be tested individually. This method is expected to bring down the cost of swab tests to about PhP300 to PhP400 per individual compared to the PhP3,000 normal swab test [4].

Go to Yoorekka for more COVID-19 updates in Cebu.