There is no plan of placing this city under lockdown before the Holy Week despite the surge in coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases, an official of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) said Tuesday.

Melquiades Feliciano, IATF-EID deputy chief implementer for the Visayas, said Cebu City has been able to hold up despite the uptrend in coronavirus cases starting last February.

He commended the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) here for its aggressive campaign against the dreaded virus down to the villages.

Feliciano’s remarks came after 25 localities in the National Capital Region were placed under “special concern” lockdown due to the rising number of Covid-19 cases.

He said Cebuanos must avoid activities joined in by huge crowds during the coming Holy Week which may cause contagion and trigger mutation of the deadly virus.

“We have to prevent transmission. This is the only way to prevent mutation of coronavirus disease. We have to stop the mutation by preventing its transmission,” Feliciano told the Philippine News Agency in a phone interview.

Department of Health (DOH)-Central Visayas chief pathologist Dr. Mary Jean Loreche said in a press briefing Monday that they sent last week around 100 sample specimens to the Philippine Genome Center for Covid-19 variant sequencing.

Loreche said more sequencing has been requested after 67 samples from Region 7 (Central Visayas) were found to be mutations of potential clinical significance (MPCS).

She said this capital city has been able to keep its pace in combating the virus, owing to its aggressive contact tracing and testing which started some three weeks ago.

Feliciano said, “We have adjusted our policies in order to out aggressiveness in our tracing, testing, isolation and treatment. In fact, we have a downtrend in cases compared to last month”.

He pointed out that a lockdown is not necessary anymore “because we have an improved critical care utilization rate”.

Meanwhile, Feliciano commended churches in Cebu for strictly adhering to the 50 percent capacity during their Holy Masses and other religious activities, saying this has helped the EOC in preventing transmission of the virus.

He, however, reminded the police and other uniformed service personnel to be aggressive in implementing the basic health and safety standards down to the zone (purok) level to sustain the gain in the fight against Covid-19.

As of Monday night, there were 63 new active coronavirus cases, 134 new recoveries and three deaths in the city.

The city now has a total of 2,576 active cases, 16,456 recoveries and 771 deaths out of the 19,803 total cases since March last year. (PNA)