THE number of barangays in Cebu City that have beaten the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) continues to rise.
As of Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020, 44 of the city’s 80 barangays had “zeroed in transmission,” according to City Councilor Joel Garganera, deputy chief implementer of the Emergency Operations Center.
This means these barangays have had no active cases for the past 14 days.
The number includes the mountain barangays of Buot, Paril, Sudlon 1 and Taptap, which never had a single Covid-19 case since the start of the pandemic in March.
The remaining 36 barangays will continue to be monitored, Garganera said.
Cebu City’s active cases have dropped to 217 this week.
Based on the Department of Health (DOH) 7 data, the number of recoveries in Cebu City has reached 9,263 with a death toll of 678.
The city has a total of 10,158 confirmed cases.
Despite the continuous drop in the number of active cases, Garganera reminded the public not to be complacent.
In previous interviews, Garganera said that as long Covid-19 is present, there is possibility of a spike in cases.
On Saturday, the DOH reported close to 3,000 new Covid-19 cases in the country.
For the first time in months, the National Capital Region (NCR) was not among the top sources.
Quezon City, however, ranked fourth, with 143 cases among the 2,673 new infections logged.
The new count brought the total Covid-19 cases in the country to 354,338.
Seeing a high number of cases Saturday were Rizal (185), Cavite (175), Batangas (159) and Bulacan (88).
The DOH said 73 more patients also succumbed to Covid-19, raising the death toll to 6,603.
It said the majority of the new deaths were recorded in the NCR with 32.
Calabarzon and Central Luzon also saw a high number of deaths with 10 and nine, respectively.
As to recoveries, the DOH said 539 new recoveries were recorded.
The number of Covid-19 survivors has now reached a total of 295,312.
Globally, as of Oct. 16, there had been 38,789,204 confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 1,095,097 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. (JJL, HDT / SunStar Philippines)