CEBU CITY – Mayor Michael Rama said he will allow more public activities that will spur economic growth amid the continued slowdown of Covid-19 cases here.
Rama announced this during a news conference following a recent public concert at the Cebu City Sports Center attended by at least 100,000 people. Videos of the jam-packed “Arat na Cebu” free concert went viral on social media with netizens fearing that gathering will result in the spike of Covid-19 cases anew.
“We saw our people's desire to go out and be free after two years of being caged by a pandemic. Our young people want it. We will give them and the young at heart more reasons to be the social being we are,” said Rama.
The mayor said with surges in Covid-19 cases in the past two years, the Cebu City now needs to embrace an open policy to “go back to what we have been used to before this pandemic came, and before we got devastated by a calamity.”
“There is no other way now but to rise up and move forward,” he said, citing that events related to the coming elections will mean gatherings of huge crowds.
Councilor Joel Garganera, head of the Emergency Operations Center, said although all gatherings are potential virus spreaders if these are held in open-air settings, the concert participants, he added, are wearing face masks, and that only fully vaccinated people were allowed to attend the event.
The Department of Health was also worried over the huge number of people who attended the March 26 concert. Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, DOH spokeswoman, said the concert can be a super spreader event, especially if concert goers did not wear their face masks properly and if there were unvaccinated people too. (John Rey Saavedra and Cebu Examiner)
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