A LEADING restaurant in Baguio City has recorded a cluster of infections, forcing management to close operations for safety and health.
The food establishment, in a statement through Facebook, said closure will be for two weeks to undertake contact tracing and mass testing with the government's support to identify positive patients.
The restaurant wants to assure patrons that the management is diligently complying and doing all actions to "feed and provide sustenance to our employees and maintaining our facilities for us to serve you."
The management said they are practicing "proper hygiene, sanitation, and social distancing; disinfecting and cleaning of facilities; coordination with health and government officials and feeding, providing shelter, and comfort to our employees."
As of Tuesday, November 3, Baguio City has 2,229 confirmed Covid-19 cases with 675 active, 28 deaths and 1,526 recoveries.
Last week, Baguio City was tagged as a high-risk area in an updated study by the Octa team of researchers.
Octa research, a group of academics from the University of the Philippines and the University of Sto. Tomas, has been doing research on Covid-19 in the country. The study was conducted from October 4 to 17 for local government units outside the National Capital region.
Octa also ranked the municipality of Itogon as number 1 and Baguio City and Benguet as fourth in terms of Covid-19 attack rates.
The "high-risk" classification is based on high daily case load, high attack rate and/or high hospitalization occupancy.
The Octa team study showed Itogon has a daily attack rate [per 1,000 population] of 11.6 percent, while Baguio has a 10.2 percent attack rate.
The team's findings showed concern for both areas, saying: "We list LGUs of concern based on high cases per day, high attack rate, and/or high hospital occupancy. We are concerned that these LGUs may experience high hospital burden in the coming weeks that may stress their health care systems and overwhelm their medical frontliners."
High-risk areas in Luzon include Baguio City and Itogon (Benguet) Calamba (Laguna), Angono, Cainta and Tatay (Rizal), Lucena (Quezon), Ilagan (Isabela), Batangas City (Batangas), General Trias (Cavite) and Pasay, Makati, Pasig and Mandaluyong in the National Capital Region (NCR).
For areas with the most cases per day outside the NCR, Baguio City ranked 12th with 37 cases per day.
The Octa team averaged daily new cases from October 18 to 24 based on Department of Health case reports, while the daily attack rate per 1,000 is based on the two-week period, or from October 11 to 24.