BAGUIO Mayor Benjamin Magalong has signed a resolution pushing the city’s 128 barangays to establish special care and isolation units in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Resolution No. 292, series of 2021, signed by Magalong, is pursuant to Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Memorandum Circular No. 2020-063, which tasks barangays in the country to identify and establish appropriate COVID-19 special care facilities in their local jurisdictions.
As part of the push to get barangays to establish said facilities, the City Health Services Office (CHSO) previously provided tools to assist the barangays in assessing the possible barangay isolation units as well as providing support for logistics.
However, according to the city council, the majority of the city’s barangays have yet to comply with the order to establish local isolation and care facilities.
Under the DILG memorandum, guidelines for the sought barangay isolation facilities have been provided, including proper ventilation; provision of appropriate furniture and beds, running water and electricity, kitchen facilities and toilets; appropriate allocation of space to ensure high capacity without overcrowding, with a maximum of one person per room in the facility, or with beds separated with a set distance and with thick vinyl curtains that must be regularly disinfected each day.
The memorandum also establishes that the facilities in question should be placed in the barangays in such a way that the facilities are sufficiently distant from densely populated portions of the barangays but still accessible to the health workers and barangay officials who will be running the facility.
