CEBU City has notched another record in daily coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases after it reported 825 new cases on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022, the highest daily tally since the pandemic began.
Since 1,595 individuals were subjected to a swab test on Jan. 19, this means a positivity rate of 51.72 percent, also a record high for the city.
The city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) said there are now 4,570 active cases in the city, a huge leap from just 11 active cases last Jan. 1.
The top five barangays with active cases are Guadalupe with 477 active cases; Lahug, 285; Apas, 224; Tisa, 184; and Capitol Site, 176.
The EOC also reported 52 recoveries and two deaths, raising the total number of deaths this month to seven.
The development comes after the Octa Research group warned that the growth of Covid-19 cases in Cebu City and Lapu-Lapu City was “accelerating.”
Councilor Joel Garganera, deputy chief implementer of the city’s EOC, said with the increasing number of cases, getting the details of each patient for documentation and contact tracing have become a challenge.
He said the EOC is short on personnel as the contact tracers it employed in 2021 who were from the Department of the Interior and Local Government were no longer around as their contracts had not been renewed.
The surge in Covid-19 cases in the city has also put the focus back on hospital capacity after the third wave of Covid-19 last August brought scenes of patients receiving life-saving oxygen in cars as they waited outside full hospitals to be admitted.
On Jan. 19, the city’s four public hospitals were already in the high risk zone after their Covid bed occupancy exceeded 80 percent while Covid bed occupancy at the 11 private hospitals in Cebu City was still considered to be in the safe zone at 41.67 percent.
Garganera said Mayor Michael Rama's Executive Order 157, effective from Jan. 19 to 31, 2022, will help a lot not to fill the Covid beds immediately as it instructs the management of the hospitals to admit only those patients whose conditions are severe or critical.
Home isolation has also been allowed for Covid-19 patients experiencing just mild symptoms.
Despite this, he said the City will open more barangay isolation centers to prepare for the influx of more patients as the number of cases and their close contacts increases.
Urbanized cities
On Wednesday, Jan. 19, the Octa Research group said that while the growth of Covid-19 cases in the National Capital Region (NCR) Plus areas, which include the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal, has been slowing, the growth of cases in several highly urbanized cities (HUCs) outside NCR Plus has been “accelerating.”
It cited Cebu and Lapu-Lapu Cities in Cebu among 16 HUCs outside NCR Plus with “very high growth rates.”
Octa fellow Dr. Guido David said Tacloban City had the highest one-week growth rate of 469 percent, followed by Cebu City with 378 percent and Davao City with 305 percent.
The cities of Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo and Zamboanga recorded over 200 percent growth rate over the past week, while the cities of Bacolod, Dagupan, General Santos, Lapu-Lapu, Lucena, Naga and Santiago logged a Covid-19 growth rate of over 100 percent from Jan. 12 to 18, 2022.
Lapu-Lapu City had a one-week growth rate of 182 percent.
The research group added that the Covid-19 average daily attack rate (Adar) per 100,000 population from Jan. 12 to 18 in Baguio City was “severe” at 130.56, while it was “very high” in Lapu-Lapu City (35.94) and Cebu City (31.60).
It was also “very high” in Santiago (54.17), Naga City (52.25), Iloilo (44.48), Tacloban (36.90), Dagupan (36.28), Angeles (35.54) and Lucena (33.16).
Adar refers to the number of new daily cases per day per 100,000 population.
It said Cebu City and Tacloban had the highest reproduction or infection numbers of 4.51 and 4.59, respectively.
On Thursday, Octa said the reproduction number in the NCR had decreased steeply to 1.79 from 4.24 last week, while the weekly growth rate became negative for the first time since Dec. 24, 2021.
The Department of Health Central Visayas case bulletin shows that Lapu-Lapu City had 134 new cases and 914 active cases on Wednesday, Jan. 19.
Medicine supply
In Cebu City, the local government is working to address the lack of supply of influenza medicines in drugstores brought about by the surge in Covid-19 cases.
Gerardo Carillo, chairman of the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CCDRRMO), said they had already proposed to allocate a P50 million budget for the purchase of medicines for cold and flu.
"Mayor Michael Rama had decided to allocate funds in order to give medicines to 40,000 low-income families as a pre-emptive method," Carillo said.
The former Cebu City south district councilor said the funding would be taken from the Quick Response Fund of the city.
Carillo revealed Thursday that they were going to hold a session for the approval of a resolution that will appropriate a P50 million budget for the purchase of influenza medicines and vitamins.
"The poor are those who will be given medicines like paracetamol, analgesic, Lagundi and multivitamins, following the onslaught of the Omicron variant and other Covid-related diseases," Carillo said.
He said the city government will purchase the medicines directly from the manufacturers, where they can get them at P3 compared to P7-P10 in drugstores.
Carillo refuted the claim of the association of pharmacies that they have enough supply of medicines, particularly influenza medicines, saying it runs contrary to what is happening now in the drugstores, where there are no available medicines for fever, cough and cold.
The hoarding of medicines is now being considered by the CCDRRMO as one of the causes of the drug shortage. (TPT / CTL / SunStar Philippines)