Cebu City is lone area under strict lockdown

CEBU CITY will be the lone area in the Philippines to be under an enhanced community quarantine starting June 16 as coronavirus infections there continued to surge, the presidential palace said on Tuesday.

Presidential spokesman Harry L. Roque said cases have been doubling in the central Philippine city every 6.5 days.

From 1,749 cases on May 31, the number has ballooned to 2,417 as of June 14, he said at a news briefing.

Mr. Roque added that four of 10 tests in Cebu City were positive. Sixty-one out of 80 villages had active cases, 13 of which were the worst hit, he added.

President Rodrigo R. Duterte on Monday said Cebu City would revert to an enhanced community quarantine, while its neighbor Talisay City would go back to a modified enhanced quarantine.

National task force chief implementer Carlito G. Galvez, Jr. said they flew to Cebu to check the situation there before they came up with the decision

Aside from Metro Manila, also kept under a general quarantine were the northern provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Santiago City, Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Tarlac and Olongapo City.

Joining them were the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon, Occidental Mindoro, Bohol, Cebu, Negros Oriental, Siquijor, and the cities of Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, Davao and Zamboanga.

The rest of the country remained under a modified general community quarantine, Mr. Roque said. — Gillian M. Cortez