Davao City bounces back to ‘minimal risk’ status

DAVAO CITY—THIS city bounced back to its erstwhile manageable level this month after a steady and alarming rise in Covid-19 cases last month.

City Mayor Sara Duterte-carpio also ordered the return to requiring negative test result and other check for random symptoms from arriving airplane passengers to prevent an exponential surge currently being experienced in Metro Manila and Cebu.

The City Mayor’s Office disclosed late last week of the recent classification of the city as minimal risk area in the Local Government Unit Risk Classification based on the Community Quarantine Decision Matrix. This matrix is being provided by the national Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

According to the matrix, Davao City recorded 563 cases in the past three to four weeks and 235 in the past one to two weeks.

Dr. Ashley Lopez, acting city health officer, said that the classification was based on two indicators, the two-week growth rate (2WGR) and the average daily attack rate (ADAR).

“Our 2WGR is -58.26, which means our cases are decreasing. Under this indicator, we are classified low. Another indicator is the ADAR, we are at 0.9 or less than one per 100,000. That is also classified low,” he said.

As of March 16, the city’s recovery rate was 92 percent.

Davao City has recorded 13,408 cases since March last year, of which, 398 were active cases. This number of confined active cases constitute only or 3 percent of total infection.

The city has placed five barangays under high-risk category, however, and seven under moderate risk, but Lopez said there were no barangays classified under critical risk.

“In the past two weeks we have a remarkable decrease of cases and we have an improved situation compared to the last few months,” he said.

With enough breathing space to manage the pandemic locally, Dutertecarpio has directed health and airport authorities to require all arriving passengers to show their health records and their respective swab test taken during the last 72 hours indicating negative result.

She said this would help prevent the incursion of the more infectious Covid-19 variants.

So far, Lopez said, the occupancy rate in the city’s Temporary Treatment and Monitoring Facilities (TTMF) stood at 13.8 percent. This means there are few positive cases admitted in the facilities, he said.

The Southern Philippines Medical Center’s utilization rate for the Covid ward beds and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds was less than 60 percent.

Lopez,however,saidthefiguresshould not make Davao residents complacent.

Vaccine utilization though, was slow here, as with many other local governments elsewhere in the country.

A total of 7,970 health-care workers from public health facilities and private hospitals here were inoculated as of this week, but the number is only slightly more than one third of the targetted 21,000 health-care workers.

Former City Health Officer, Dr. Josephine Villafuerte, who headed the city’s Vaccination Cluster, said that of the health-care workers on the list, 15 have refused and 167 deferred vaccination.

“Those who refused are those who would want another kind of vaccine. Deferred cases failed to pass the screening stage, some of them have conditions like persistent high blood pressure, exposure to Covid infection, and recent Covid infection,” she said.

She said the city government started this week the pre-registration of Dabawenyos who want to be inoculated against Covid-19. She said that Dabawenyos who are 18 years old and above may go to the nearest district and barangay health offices in their area to be pre-listed.