DAVAO CITY, July 7 (PIA) - Vigorous, aggressive, forward looking.

This is how the new chairperson of the Regional Task Force 11 on COVID 19 and Office of Civil Defense XI Regional Director Manolito Orense described the response efforts of the RTF-11 which was established and started by its former chairperson Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte.

Mayor Sara, who was unanimously chosen by the members of the Regional Peace and Order Council and the Regional Development Council to lead the fight against COVID 19 in Davao Region, showed a significant performance during the early days of the pandemic.

This continued until May 25 when the RTF submitted to and followed the national structure with OCD XI regional director recognized as the chairperson and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) regional director as the vice chairperson.

" Despite the recent changes in the organizational structure of the RTF 11, Orense admitted how Mayor Sara as the chairperson contributed much to the what the task force has accomplished. "We give the credit to these accomplishments of the RTF to Mayor Sara who has been very active, dedicated, and committed in achieving the goals of the RTF," he said.

Orense cited some significant achievements initiated by Mayor Sara such as assigning dedicated COVID hospitals; establishment of quarantine facilities, and even on supervising the different provincial governors in the region to be aligned with one another in policies and decisions.

The regional official elaborated that response efforts of the region are on track, although not perfect at all.

" We are not lagging behind. Infact, the region is leading the way as shown by our COVID 19 situationer that we have less confirmed cases, less deaths, less infection rate, and high recovery rate. All these would mean that our response efforts are on track."

Davao City is recently declared under Moderate General Community Quarantine (MGCQ), following all other Davao provinces which were ahead under the same community quarantine classification.

Orense attributed the accomplishments of the region from strict implementation of the different measures to avoid the spread of the infection.

" A big part of this can be attributed to strict local policies such as curfew, liquor ban, the use of Food Pass, and the no movement on Sunday policy. Added to that are the strict wearing of face mask, and social distancing as observed properly in Davao City."

He added that besides these strict local policies, another contributory factor that has positively helped the region in reaching its targets in the fight against COVID19 is the discipline of Dabawenyos.

" People in Davao Region follow and comply with the policies being formulated. The discipline of Dabawenyos shown during this time of the pandemic really put things into order", the RTF 11 chairperson said. (PIA XI/Frances Mae Macapagat)