THE Cebu City Health Department (CCHD) will no longer post on its Facebook page the daily reports of Covid-19 cases in the city, said the CCHD in a post dated July 6, 2020.
This, upon the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to avoid causing confusion among the public while its office and the Department of Health (DOH) are still harmonizing their data.
The CCHD further instructed the public to refer to the data provided by the DOH Central Visayas Facebook page instead.
In a virtual press conference on July 6, DOH 7 spokesperson Mary Jean Loreche said the local government units should wait for the validated data of the Regional Epidemiology and Surveillance Units (Resu) before they post the data given to them from the molecular laboratories.
Loreche explained that when molecular laboratories release the results of the tests they conducted, these will be given to the Resu and local government units (LGUs).
The Resu will validate the data given to ensure there are no repeat tests and duplication, as well as to check that there is no double entry of names logged, while the LGUs will use the data for contact tracing purposes and not for media and public consumption, said Loreche.
Meanwhile, 25 new confirmed Covid-19 cases were recorded in Mandaue City on Monday, July 6.
On the Facebook page of the Mandaue City Public Information Office, all the new cases are from the community: Canduman, Paknaan, Looc, Casuntingan, Upper Canduman, Tabok, Banilad, Subangdaku, Upper Tabok, Cabancalan, Cambaro, Tawason, Tribunal, Umapad, Upper Labogon, Looc and Tipolo.
The decontamination team of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office will decontaminate the residences of the patients.
Mandaue City has a total of 1,061 cases with 717 active cases, 319 recoveries and 25 deaths.
In Lapu-Lapu City, 25 new Covid-19 cases were also reported on July 6.
On his official Facebook page, Mayor Junard Chan said the 25 new cases are from barangays Pajo, Basak, Pusok, Babag, Bankal, Gun-ob, Ibo, Calawisan, Mactan, Marigondon, Pajac and Poblacion.
On the national front, for the second day in a row, the DOH reported an increase of more than 2,000 in confirmed Covid-19 cases.
In its case bulletin as of 4 p.m. on July 6, the DOH listed an additional 2,099 cases, which brought the total Covid-19 tally in the country to 46,333.
Of the total, 32,845 are active cases, according to DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire.
The National Capital Region (NCR) still accounted for the highest number of new cases, followed by Central Visayas and Calabarzon regions.
Vergeire said cases in Metro Manila have been rising in the past two weeks while those in Visayas have been observed to be “slowly decreasing.”
“But we must continue to monitor the area if the decrease will be sustained,” she said.
She added that the government is focusing on NCR and Cebu, where clustering of cases has been detected.
In Cebu City, Vergeire said clustering was observed in 64 barangays while in NCR, clustering was found in 314 barangays and in three closed-setting facilities.
Meanwhile, Vergeire said an additional 243 patients have recovered, increasing the number of recoveries to 12,185.
Six additional deaths were recorded, raising the death toll to 1,303. Five of the six deaths reported occurred in June.
Out of the 2,099 new cases, Vergeire said 1,258 are fresh cases and 841 are late cases.
Fresh cases refer to test results that were released in the last three days while late cases refer to test results that came out more than three days ago but were validated by the Epidemiology Bureau only in the last 24 hours.
Although cases are seemingly increasing at a faster rate, Vergeire said the national case doubling time as of July 3 was still around eight days, or 7.95 days. This is the length of time that it takes for confirmed coronavirus cases to double.
She said this means that the situation is “still manageable.”
Vergeire said the case doubling time was also computed at 7.95 days in Cebu City and 8.39 days in NCR.
Meanwhile, Vergeire said the country’s reproductive rate as of June 17 was 1.09. This means that an infected person can infect more than one person.
The DOH reported the biggest spike in infections in a single day on Sunday, July 5, when the country’s coronavirus count increased by 2,434 cases. (JJL, KFD, JKV, Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)