While transmission of the Covid-19 in the city has decreased, it remains to be on a high level, city health officials say.
City Health Services Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo noted a decrease in Covid-19 transmission as shown by the daily reports from April 21 until May 20.
But city epidemiologist Dr. Donabelle Panes said the city still needs to show improvement in the other indicators to attain a controlled transmission status.
She said transmission level remained high in the city and still no evidence that it has been controlled in the community level. She added that the city also remain on situation level 3 in terms of its transmission level and response capacity which is still high on the scale.
“The virus is still locally acquired and infection is now not focused on populational sub-groups unlike before when we were certain because it is concentrated on certain groups like banks, groceries and the like. It is not the case in the past three months as we cannot anymore identify the specific groups infected,” she said.
Most case clusters occur in homes and workplaces, Panes said.
Based on the 7-day moving average indicator or the number of cases expected in the next seven days, the number of daily cases is still far from the manageable level of 19 cases per day.
Panes said cases started to peak last March and the surge saw the infection swell by more than 100 percent. Baguio has more than 12,000 confirmed cases since the surge started in March 6 to the present.
It peaked during the Holy Week and did not slow down with a peak on April 2 when 227 new cases were recorded.
Records show that it took the city only nine days to log 1,000 cases or a high average of 111 cases per day and another 10 days to reach the 2,000 level. Total cases logged for April was 3,046 or a daily case of about 102.
Active single day cases high was 1,460 logged on April 14 which has then started to ebb that by April 28, the number is a low 576.
For this month, 1,700 cases had been logged by Friday or at least 61 new cases per day, against a recovery of 2,091 or a daily recovery rate of about 75 compared to last month’s 85.
Death, however, remains high with 50 deaths for the 28 day period with a high of six on April 6 or nearly two deaths per day compared to the 82 for the whole month of April or nearly three deaths a day.
Panes said the city under Mayor Benjamin Magalong has continued to work to strengthen the control systems to attain its goal to “break the chain of transmission to manage cases and not put so much pressure on the health care system and at the same time continue economic activities without compromising the health of the community.”
Baguio, as of May 21, accounts to 34 percent of the total number of Covid-19 cases in the Cordillera and ranks 20th among all cities in the country in terms of Covid-19 cases.
