Baguio mayor seeks Covid level 2 status
BAGUIO CITY: Mayor Benjamin Magalong will request the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to lower the city’s Covid-19 alert level status to Level 2 in view of the improving situation.
The mayor said the city’s case reproduction number had been on a downtrend after peaking on January 3.
“Our case reproduction number (Rt) went above 1.0 starting December 23 and we were able to lower it back below 1.0 on January 21 or after 29 days (For Delta it took us 1 month and 2 days). Today is our 12th day with an Rt below 1.0. I am confident it will go down further,” the mayor said.
He added that, “From a high of 693 cases a day (7-day moving average), we are now down to 141. This is based on the onset of symptoms. Looking at the trend, it will continue to go downhill,” he added.
He said that all other analytical graphs and data (ADAR, weekly growth rate, 2-week infection growth rate, positivity rate, vaccination rate, hospital care utilization rate (HCUR), occupancy rate in local government unit-managed isolation and quarantine facilities) reinforce the city’s assessment that cases are going down.
The analytics are being done in collaboration with the University of the Philippines-Baguio.
“Omicron is undoubtedly the dominant variant, but we still have Delta based on the PGC (Philippine Genome Center) data released in December. This probably accounts for some of the fatalities this month,” the mayor said.
City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo in her report to the Management Committee on February
2 said the city’s epidemic risk level has gone down to moderate risk based on the average daily attack rate (ADAR) and the two-week growth rate as of February 1.
The daily case average dropped to 334 on January 23 to 29 from 637 on January 16 to 22 while the daily recovery average increased to 560 from 419. Death average slightly decreased from 23 to 19.
The case positivity rate also decreased to 36.15 percent from the previous week’s 45.7 percent. The highest positivity rate reached by the city during this peak was at 48 percent from January 9 to 15.
The weekly infection growth rate is now 0.71 percent, or less than 1, which means that transmission has started to decrease. This went as high as 7.71 on January 2 to 8 and 6.9 on January 9 to 15.
The ADAR plunged to 74/100,000 population from 98.1/100,000 and the two-week growth rate decreased to -29 percent from 187 percent.
The daily average test was 417 in the past two weeks.
The HCUR went down to 63.72 percent from 68.7 percent while isolation facility bed occupancy further decreased to 30.14 percent from 69.95 percent. DEXTER A. SEE WITH
GABY KEITH