Mayor Benjamin Magalong will request the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to lower Baguio’s Covid-19 alert level status to Level 2 in view of the improving situation.
The mayor said the city’s case reproduction number had been on a steep downtrend after peaking last Jan. 3.
“Our case reproduction number (Rt) went above 1.0 starting Dec. 23 and we were able to lower it back below 1.0 on Jan. 21 or after 29 days. For Delta it took us one month and two days,” the mayor said.
“From a high of 693 cases a day (seven-day moving average), we are now down to 141. This is based on onset of symptoms. Looking at the trend, it will continue to be on a downhill,” he added.
He said all other analytical graphs and data, such as the average daily attack rate, weekly growth rate, two-week infection growth rate, positivity rate, vaccination rate, health care utilization rate, and occupancy rate in LGU-managed isolation and quarantine facilities reinforce the city’s assessment that cases are going down.
The analytics are being done in collaboration with the University of the Philippines Baguio.
“Omicron is undoubtedly the dominant variant but we still have Delta based on the Philippine Genome Center data released in December. This probably accounts for some of the fatalities this month,” the mayor said.
City Health Services Officer Rowena Galpo in her report to the Management Committee on Feb. 2 said the city’s epidemic risk level has gone down to moderate risk based on the average daily attack rate and the two-week growth rate as of Feb. 1.
The daily case average dropped to 334 during week Jan. 23 to 29 from 637 during Jan. 16 to 22 while the daily recovery average increased to 560 from 419. Death average slight decreased from 23 to 19.
The case positivity rate also decreased to 36.15 percent from the previous week’s 45.7 percent. The highest positivity rate reached by the city during this peak was 48 percent from Jan. 9 to 15.
The weekly infection growth rate is now 0.71 percent or less than 1, which meant that transmission has started to decrease. This went as high as 7.71 on Jan. 2 to 8 and 6.9 on Jan. 9 to 15.
The average daily attack rate plunged to 74/100,000 population from 98.1/100,000 and the two-week growth rate decreased to -29 percent from 187 percent.
The daily average test was 417 in the past two weeks.
Hospital care utilization rate went down to 63.72 percent from 68.7 percent while isolation facility bed occupancy further decreased to 30.14 percent from 69.95 percent. – Aileen P. Refuerzo
April 20, 2024
