CEBU City logged on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021, its lowest daily positivity rate for the year at 2.17 percent, which is within the World Health Organization’s (WHO) five percent threshold for positivity rate.
This, after only 23 of the 1,060 samples tested for coronavirus yielded positive results on Saturday.
“We have the lowest daily positivity rate at 2.17 percent,” Cebu City Emergency Operations Center (EOC) deputy chief implementer and Councilor Joel Garganera said on Sunday, Oct. 10.
The WHO uses a positivity rate of less than five percent for at least two weeks as one of the indicators of controlled transmission of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Garganera also said that currently only 15 Cebu City medical frontliners assigned to handle Covid-19 cases are Covid positive, which is an improvement from the about 200 medical frontliners who are Cebu City residents who had the disease two months ago, or around Aug. 9.
He added that the occupancy rate of the 15 hospitals in the city is also currently at 32 percent, which is lower than the more than 80 percent occupancy rate months ago.
“But we have to be reminded that (on) the same day last year, we had only 13 percent hospital occupancy. That is a reminder that though our cases are dwindling, it is not for us to relax or lower our guard, but to be mindful that Covid is still very much around,” he said.
Garganera then continued to encourage those who had yet to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to avail themselves of the free vaccination program.
As of Oct. 8, only 44.33 percent of the city’s eligible population were fully vaccinated.
As of Oct. 9, Cebu City had only 523 active Covid-19 cases.
This is a vast improvement from the over 4,000 active cases—by the Department of Health 7’s count—that the city logged daily in the second half of August.