From muted fear to mass hysteria, from controlled frustration to tempered expectations, residents here have been tiptoeing from the edges of these situations.
When the country was placed under community quarantine, which progressed rapidly into an enhanced stage, people here saw their liberties in life restrained and ultimately restricted to the point nobody was allowed to roam around freely – locked down.
The Corona Virus 2019 (COVID 19) pandemic that hit the globe early this year is unparalleled to virtually all of us, unless some are in their very advance age to even remember that the last time a similar plague happened with such magnitude and scale was the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
The country did not fully grasp the scale of the CVOID 19 threat until President Rodrigo Duterte placed Luzon under community quarantine on March 16 and later modifying the same order to placed the entire country under enhanced community quarantine barely a week later.
The local government of General Santos City was among the government units to trail blaze into the unknown territory never before seen since World War II.
To underscore that, very few are above the age of innocence and can recall what happened when the Japanese invaders occupied the thriving community established by the late General Santos City. There must be no over 1,000 of some 700,000 residents here who are above 85 years old – then young enough to understand what the war was all about until it ended in 1946.
General Santos was among the first to place the city under state of calamity as early as in February as it responded to the then growing COVID threat in the country.
The city excellently waded through the storm. It only had one confirmed COVID 19 case and the patient is now recovering after again testing positive a few weeks after he was discharged from the hospital. The latest is the patient has tested negative for the 4th such test conducted.
No resident in the city died of COVID 19 even if it attended to a little over 30 persons under investigation (PUIs) and more than 1,300 placed under monitoring. All tests conducted on the PUIs were negative.
For over 45 days now, no single patient was declared PUI (now suspected case).
When the national community quarantine was first modified, General Santos slid into the general community quarantine category. Yet the local government, did not relent ang give toomuch leg room for fear that the worse is yet to come, even though COVID data in the ity remained flat.
Yesterday, General Santos was placed under the low risk cities and provinces where quarantine may now be lifted subject to some measures still necessary to protect its residents.
The local government is yet to issue guidelines under the new situation.
The sooner the city mayor and his team absorb the situation we are now placed in, the earlier we can transition from containing to fighting and then restarting our lives – our economy.
There is still no guaranteed end in sight.
But we cannot forever be blanketed by our fears.
We should be cautionary but not tothe extent of being held back by our hesitation.
We move forward even if we have the nightmares in the back of our minds BUT with the confidence that we were able to do it right the first time.
For as long as the people are made aware that they are always part of the solution and that they are valued now more than ever, any setback in our fight versus COVID 19 will be handled with ease and understanding. The early success was a collective effort and the local government was able to galvanize general support from residents.
The fight ahead is protracted and difficult, not to mention costly and expensive.
But we have no choice.
We have to keep the positive attitude. We need to lead. We have to take some risk.
We have to do it.
