Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Oscar Moreno called anew on local governments in northern Mindanao to help each other in containing the rise in local COVID-19 cases after voicing alarm over the steady increase in local COVID0-19 cases in Iligan City.

“If there’s one lesson I learned and which all of us leaders in Northern Mindanao should accept is that we cannot afford to be parochial. While we prioritize our own, we must not isolate ourselves from the rest of the region since whatever happens to our neighbors will also impact heavily on us,” Mayor Moreno said during Saturday noon’s (Aug.22) press briefing.

In its Facebook page, the Iligan City Information Office disclosed that the city government’s emergency operations center health cluster recorded 119 local COVID-19 cases as of Aug. 21 or more than the 64 COVID-19 cases involving locally stranded individuals (LSIs) and returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs). ‘Right now we are helping Iligan City by housing a number of their arrivals at our city isolation units,’ Mayor Moreno said.

Mayor Moreno also voiced concern over the 20 local COVID-19 cases recorded in Misamis Oriental as of Aug. 20, saying he hopes the province won’t experience a surge in local transmission similar to Iligan City.

City Hall’s resident epidemiologist Dr. Teodulfo Joselito Retuya and City Health Officer Dr. Lorraine Nery both confirmed that arrivals as well as COVID-19 cases from Misamis Oriental were housed in city isolation units and the city’s temporary treatment management facility (TTMF) respectively.