The Quezon City government has launched a “Race to Zero” campaign to urge its 142 barangays to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
“The main objective is not all about the money or an award, instead our goal is to encourage all the barangays to work harder to ensure that our constituents are safe from COVID-19,” she said.
The campaign shall identify the most number of suspected and probable COVID-19 cases and the lowest number of infected persons.
Quezon City has 13,331 confirmed coronavirus cases, as the city government reported 351 new cases on Tuesday.
Active COVID-19 cases were at 2,652 following 153 new recoveries, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 10,233.
The city also had four new deaths due to COVID-19, bringing its total number to 446.
The 142 barangays would be grouped in clusters based on their population size with members of each cluster to compete against one other.
The village officials would search for active cases and conduct surveillance activities via the Barangay Health Emergency Response Team (BHERT) and barangay contact tracers.
They would visit each house within the barangay to identify anyone exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms or ha close contact with a confirmed case.
A person identified as a probable case shall go through the swab test, comprehensive contact tracing and isolation or quarantine.
According to Dr. Rolly Cruz, the City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit chief, the actual zero case is if no single case of the disease has been detected.
“The strategy is to address first the virus. Let us protect that there would be no spread (of the virus) within the community,” he said.
“We should prove that we have already stopped the community transmission of COVID-19. That’s why we have this Race to Zero,” Cruz noted.