Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia yesterday, November 3, thanked President Rodrigo Dutrete for sending immediate help to Bacolod City when it experienced a sudden spike in COVID-19 cases in August and September.
The exponential spread of COVID-19 in our midst has since been contained, the mayor told the president in a letter.
“The quick and decisive response from you, and from Senator Bong Go, in just a matter of hours after our appeal for help was emailed to your Office went a long way in reassuring our people that, indeed, you had our backs at a critical time in our fight against COVID-19,” Leonardia said.
He cited the immediate assessment visit of Secretary Michael Lloyd Dino, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, and the team from the Department of Health Region 7.
This resulted in the September 1 arrival of retired Maj. Gen. Melquiades Feliciano, his nurse-wife, Mia, and their team, who helped organize the Bacolod’s emergency command center for more focused anti-COVID protocols.
The Felicianos trained Bacolod’s core team on how to hunt down the virus and help those afflicted with it, he added.
Their team was instrumental in bringing down COVID cases in Bacolod from triple-digits per day in mid-September to early-October to the present low of 2-digit and sometimes even single-digit cases per day, Leonardia said.
He informed the president that in appreciation of the Felicianos work in Bacolod for two months, they were named an “Adopted Couple” of the city.
The Bacolod emergency command center set up by the Felicianos is now becoming a practical academy of sorts for other local government units in Negros Occidental for replication.
The mayor also thanked the president for the deployment of medical personnel, the additional test kits and PPEs, and the quarantine and isolation facilities built by the Department of Public Works and Highways for Bacolod City.
He assured the president that the Bacolod anti-COVID emergency command center will continue to carry out the operational strategy of curb-contact-contain-care-connect to contain the spread of the virus.*