Central Visayas logs 11,103 active cases

ACTIVE coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in Central Visayas breached the 10,000 mark on Saturday, July 31, 2021. On Sunday, the region logged 936 additional cases.

Central Visayas currently has 11,103 active cases.

Majority of the cases, or 3,037, were recorded in Cebu Province, according to the Department of Health (DOH) 7 daily bulletin.

Cebu City had 2,942 active cases; Bohol, 1,832; Lapu-Lapu City, 1,185; Negros Oriental, 1,058; Mandaue City, 1,018; and Siquijor, 31 cases.

Central Visayas also reported 20 additional Covid-related deaths and 225 new recoveries on Sunday.

Of the 629 available Covid ward beds in the region, a total of 338 are already occupied, as of Saturday, July 31.

As to isolation beds in infirmaries and levels 1, 2 and 3 hospitals, 748 of the 1,336 allocated beds are in use, while 47 of 111 allocated beds in intensive care units are also occupied.

On Sunday, Aug. 1, the DOH reported over 100 deaths from Covid-19 nationwide for the fourth consecutive day, pushing the death toll in the country past 28,000.

The DOH also reported more than 8,000 new infections for the third day in a row, reverting the country’s two-week growth rate to positive territory and raising the cumulative count to nearly 1.6 million.

The increase coincided with the detection of Covid-19 cases caused by the highly contagious delta variant in at least nine out of 17 regions. As of July 28, there have been 216 Delta cases, with eight deaths nationwide.

Based on DOH case bulletins, new infections over a 14-day period had been on a downtrend in the past two months, declining by 7.5 percent on July 5 to 18 and by 13.6 percent on June 21 to July 4.

New cases, however, have started to climb, reaching 90,602 in the recent two weeks from July 19 to Aug. 1, an increase of over 26 percent from the 71,713 in the previous two weeks from July 5 to 18.

The seven-day moving average increased again to around 7,000 on Sunday, after three months of gradual decline from the peak on April 11 to 17.

In its case bulletin on Sunday, the DOH listed 8,735 new infections, a new high since the 8,748 on May 28.

New cases have exceeded 8,000 for the third consecutive day, bringing the cumulative case count to 1,597,689. Eleven duplicates were removed.

The daily positivity rate remained high at 14.9 percent, but testing output was slightly lower at 50,116 on July 30 as two laboratories were not operational and four others were unable to submit their testing data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.

There were 127 additional deaths, the lowest in the recent four days as the DOH reported 176 deaths on July 29, 145 on July 30 and 167 on July 31.

These included 75 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries but were validated to be deaths. As of Aug. 1, the DOH has documented 28,016 Covid-19 deaths in the country. The case fatality rate swung back to 1.75 percent.

There were 5,930 new recoveries, bringing the total to 1,506,027.

Nine recoveries were reclassified as active cases, raising the number of active cases in hospitals and isolation centers to 63,646, or 4.0 percent of the total count.

Of these active cases as of July 30, 1.2 percent were critical, 2.1 percent were severe, 1.45 percent were moderate, 94 percent were mild and 1.3 percent were asymptomatic. (MVI / SunStar Philippines / WBS)