4-DAY TIMEOUT. Negros Occidental and Bacolod City officials hold a joint press conference at Negros Residences, Saturday morning.

THE Provincial Government of Negros Occidental and Bacolod City have united to hold “timeout weekend” from August 28 to 31,2020, to arrest coronavirus disease (Covid-19) by mass testing of 10,000 individuals with flu-like symptoms and close contacts of positive patients.

The "timeout weekend" was introduced by Former Third District Representative Alfredo Benitez, who is now the provincial consultant on economic affairs of Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson.

In a joint press conference Saturday morning, August 22, of Bacolod City and Negros Occidental’s leaders at Negros Residences, Benitez said, "there will be no movement at all. There will be a lockdown for four days while we test everybody."

The lockdown will be imposed through an Executive Order to be issued by Lacson for the province and Mayor Evelio Leonardia for Bacolod City.

"We are asking for the cooperation of everybody because if we do not arrest Covid-19, we could be next to Cebu," Benitez said.

The plan will be implemented in phases, with Bacolod City taking the lead on August 28 to 29 where 5,000 individuals will be swabbed, followed by Silay City, Talisay City, Bago City and Murcia from August 30 to 31 where the other 5,000 individuals will also be swabbed.

The swab tests will be free, as the required amount pegged at P35 million will come from the national government through the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).

Benitez said Bacolod and the province will coordinate to ensure enough bed capacity for Covid-19-positive turnouts.

He said the province needs to strengthen its contact tracing efforts, especially those with Covid-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat, coughing and loss of taste and smell.

“Once we do an efficient contact tracing, we will test them,” he said.

He said the test results should not be long, which will be implemented in the five molecular laboratories in the province. If it will last a week, a suspected patient could have interacted with more people which will cause a problem, he added.

He also said the province plans to produce 2,500 test results per day.

Benitez said it is very important that the people and the local government units will be cooperative in this effort due to the rising cases of Covid-19 in Bacolod and the province.

"With this, we feel we can catch up with the virus and isolate them [positive patients] before they infect others."

Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said they will ask the national Inter-Agency Task Force for a moratorium on the return of locally stranded individuals (LSIs).

Benitez said that he has talked to Secretary Vince Dizon, the country's testing czar, who promised to send the needed "consumables" to implement the mass testing.

He added a task force will be created to formulate guidelines for the mass testing.

"This is not a one-time big-time activity as we will continue this as a way of attacking Covid-19," Benitez added.