More than 4,000 individuals in the city and Benguet availed of the three-day mass testing sponsored by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority last week.
City Health Officer Rowena Galpo said of the 4,198 individuals from the city, La Trinidad, Itogon, and Tuba who availed of the free test, 176 tested positive of the Covid-19, representing 4.43 percent positivity rate, which is lower than the five percent threshold imposed by the World Health Organization.
Based on the data obtained from the City Health Services Office, 1,142 individuals from Baguio were tested, of which 18 or 1.57 percent tested positive.
In La Trinidad, 1,187 individuals were tested of which 21 or 1.77 percent tested positive of the virus; 915 in Itogon with 100 or 10.93 percent who tested positive; 752 in Tuba with 37 or 4.92 percent having tested positive.
Galpo reported there were no confirmed Covid-19 cases among the 117 individuals tested at the Philippine Military Academy and from the 85 employees of the Bureau of Fire Protection.
BCDA and subsidiary John Hay Management Corp. has been conducting a series of free mass testing for Covid-19 in the BLISTT and Kapangan in the past months that contributed in improving the current testing capacity of these areas.
Galpo said 70,177 Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests were performed in the city alone aside from the 7,500 antigen tests conducted that brought the city’s testing capacity at 20.98 percent.
Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center conducted 57,555 RT-PCR tests while Parkway, a private testing laboratory, conducted 6,332 tests and BCDA performed 6,290 tests.
Galpo said the city’s positivity rate from Aug. 1 to present is 5.6 percent while the city’s positivity rate in October increased to six percent with a range of zero to 13 percent since the start of the pandemic.
The Department of Health earlier identified Baguio City to pilot test the antigen before it will be included as one of the government’s screening and detection tools in areas that do not have sufficient supply of RT-PCR kits and for other sectors identified in the guidelines. – PIO release
