KEY POINTS: • Initial actions done by LGU-Taytay 

INTRODUCTION
The quick and widespread impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has caught most countries off guard. From the initial dismissive attitude of many countries and localities and ten suddenly to a panic reaction upon realizing that his disease must be taken seriously, almost all countries with COVID-19 cases implement large scale lockdown with varying degrees of severity. One of the first countries to implement attitude towards the disease became a national dilemma when President Rodrigo R. Duterte signed Proclamation No. 929 placing the entire Luzon under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) on Marh 16, 2020. However, one of the biggest surprises was the inclusion of Palawan to the ECQ at a time when there was zero case of COVID-19 in the province.
What was supposed to be a great season for tourism businesses proved to be a nightmare for Palawan municipal local government units (LGUs), who scrambled to evacuate their tourists and repatriate their stranded constituents outside the province. This was very evident for northern Palawan municipalities, which are considered as among the country’s premier destination. One of the municipalities that was significantly affected by this pandemic is Taytay, a quaint and rustic municipality that straddles the area between two major tourism areas in Palawan, the towns of El Nido and San Vicente (Figure 1).
At the first capital of Palawan and aptly nicknamed the “The Star of the North of Estrella del Norte, Taytay is a first-class municipality. An emerging tourism gem, it has 31 barangays, eight of which are situated on islands, with a population of a little over 80,000 scattered across more than 129,000 hectares of land are, management of entry and exit of people who wants to cross the town’s borders during the quarantine’s is a logistics nightmare.

Upon imposition of the strict community quarantines, the municipal government mobilized its various emergency response units and front liners, including the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office, the Municipal Health Office, Tourism Office, Municipal Agriculture Office, Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office, Taytay Municipal Police Station, as well as the 401st B Regional Mobile Force Battalion, the Philippine Marines 3rd Company, the Municipal Bureau of Fire Protection Office, and the Philippine Coastguard Taytay Substation. It was a quickly organized but collective and united response, despite that everybody who were assigned on the front liners has never faced this kind of enemy before, one that is unseen, little known and poorly understood.
Challenges other challenges were faced by the composite team of local emergency operation center, with meetings almost every other day or at least twice a week during the first two weeks of the ECQ. The resolve of the local officials and the composure of the men in uniform as well as the medical front liners were put to test, as evacuation problems, border crossings and even food rationing got caught in the middle of the evolving policies Imposed by the provincial and the national government.
However, upon closer examination of the municipality’s response to the pandemic, several interventions stand out. The role of uniformed personnel both as peacekeepers and at the same time humanitarian workers became one of the most significant evidence that the response of the LGU-Taytay has been quite remarkable. The cooperation between the civilian employees, particularly the medical and disaster response workers, as well as the tourism staffs, social workers, agriculture office staffs, and volunteer LGU employees, together with the men in uniform proved to be instrumental in achieving the common goal of keeping the town free from community transmission of COVID-19. Notable as well is the strong community support towards the COVID-19 front liners.
So how did LGU-Taytay managed its community quarantine situation? What are the lessons that can be learned its experiences in fighting the pandemic? It has been fighting several battle fronts while ensuring that connectivity between neighboring municipalities is maintained and making sure that its constituents and stranded tourists-area safe and calm while the town weathered the initial panic brought about by the pandemic.
In this paper, we studied the factors that ultimately contributed to a more concerted and fine-tuned response initiated and implemented by LGU-Taytay during the COVID-19 community quarantine. We focused our case study on five key points which includes the following:
1. Initial actions done by LGU-Taytay, Palawan during the implementation of Enhanced Community Quarantine lockdown.
2. Challenges encountered by the LGU-Taytay, Palawan in implementing the lockdown in their AOR particularly on stranded tourists and residents.
3. Actions of LGU-Taytay that addressed these challenges.
4. Steps undertaken by LGU-Taytay when the first COVID-19 case was recorded.
5. Level of readiness of LGU-Taytay, Palawan if local transmission will occur.

The information we presented in this paper were gathered through interviews with selected LGU-Taytay Officials, Head of Offices, the local Chief of Police, as well as the Commanding Officers of the different uniformed agencies in the locality. One of our member is the former Chief of Police of Taytay. Palawan and did the actual interview, research and documentation in the municipality while the other group members collected additional information from police blotter, MATF reports. and from online Situational Reports, Facebook Pages, and news articles and posts from official Facebook pages and the official website of Taytay, Palawan.

In the following treatise, we discussed each key point based on the data we have complied and presented them here individually.