THE Department of Health-Cordillera Administrative Region (DOH-CAR) noted a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus cases in the last two months, particularly in the province of Benguet.
Dr. Amelita Pangilinan, DOH-CAR assistant regional director, attributed the recent rise in the number of cases in the mining areas of Itogon and Tuba.
"As of November 22, the Cordillera Region now have a total of 5,312 Covid-19 confirmed cases with 58 deaths yielding a 1.1 case fatality rate with 4,823 recoveries or 91 percent and 431 active cases or 9 percent. The regional attack rate was recorded at 288.4 cases per 100,000 population with most number of age group affected to be at the 20 to 39 years old belonging to productive age group," Pangilinan said.
The classification of most cases was listed as asymptomatic which is at 3,208 or 60.4 percent cases followed by mild cases or 1,957 cases or at 36.8 percent.
"This figure shows the epidemic curve of Covid-19 cases in CAR distributed as to onset of illness. For those symptomatic cases or without symptoms on the date of the swabbing as the date of reckoning, the cases started to appear at the end of February and had a peak on October 25 to 31 with most cases in the region coming from Baguio City and Benguet Province. However, for Benguet cases, we see a sharp increase of cases can be seen at the most part of October which can be attributed to the clusters of cases in the mining communities as compared to the number of cases in Baguio City which had plateaued," Pangilinan added.
DOH-CAR also noted the clustering of cases in the months of September to November.
Most clustering of cases were reported in Baguio City coming from the economic sector such as in malls, call centers, food establishments, banks and government offices.
Clustering of cases were also reported in hospitals, jails and households.
Itogon recorded a clustering of cases at Itogon-Suyoc Resources Incorporated (ISRI) for the month of October to November.
"Another mining related clustering is that of Philex Mines in Tuba, Benguet when cases started to appear after an employee who is an engineer with travel history in NCR was detected to be positive for Sars-CoV-2. After contact tracing, there was an increase of confirmed cases seen among employees of Philex, most of these were underground workers. One good point here is that there were only a few household members who tested positive for Sars-CoV-2 even after the conduct of mass testing in the area attributed to the effective isolation quarantine of cases and their close contacts resulting to lesser secondary infection seen," Pangilinan added.
DOH-CAR also observed that the clustering of cases occurred from workplace to households or vice versa, from the mining sectors in Benguet, the economic and health sectors in Baguio City.
Factors affecting the increase of cases were due to lodging, mass gathering, mobile cases and the aggressive testing being done.