A HEALTH official from the Davao City Covid-19 Task Force said as of February 13, 2022, the positivity rate in the city has dropped to 7.8 percent from a high of around nearly 50 percent around a month ago.
Dr. Michelle Schlosser, spokesperson of the Covid-19 Task Force, said Davao City’s positivity rate is already near the acceptable rate of five percent. However, the current 7.8 percent positivity rate can still be considered high.
Davao City saw a record high positivity rate of 48.34 percent on January 21, 2022 because of the surge in cases brought about by the social gatherings held during the holiday season in December.
Since then, the positivity rate started to drop to 32 percent on January 30, then 19.7 percent on February 9.
Schlosser said that although the positivity rate continues to drop, only a positivity rate of five percent would indicate that the city is out of the ongoing surge.
“The acceptable positivity rate is five percent. But we are expecting it na mupadayon og baba ang atong cases (We are expecting the cases to decrease even more) then we can safely say na na-surpass na nato ang (we surpassed the) surge,” she said.
Schlosser said due to the downtrend in Covid-19 cases, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has reclassified Davao City to Alert Level 2 on February 7.
“Ang atong alert level will be dependent kung unsa kadaghanon ang cases (Our alert level is dependent on the number of cases),” Schlosser said during a radio interview on Wednesday, February 16. “Katong wala pa nag hatag og bag-ong alert level, murag nag-expect na gyod ta na pwede ta muabot sa Alert Level 2 (Even when the new alert level was not yet released, we were already expecting Alert Level 2 classification).”
The spokesperson said no matter the alert level classification of the city, Sars-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is still present in the community.
Schlosser emphasized the importance of the minimum public health standards and vaccination.
“Kay atong tumong, walaon gyod siya. Kung wala nay kabalhinan ning Covid, dako ang chance na ma-eradicate nato siya,” she said.
(Our goal is to eradicate Covid-19. If everyone is protected from infection, there is a big chance we can eradicate it.)