Mayor seeks lower COVID alert status for Bacolod

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – Mayor Evelio Leonardia requested Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque to downgrade the city’s COVID-19 status from Alert Level 4 to Alert Level 3 from Nov 1 to 14, 2021.

Leonardia cited as basis the declining COVID-19 attack rate of the city in the last two weeks of October.

Duque also chairs the National Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (NIATF-MEID) which leads the government’s response to the pandemic.

Under the new COVID-19 Alert Level System, Alert Level 4 refers to areas where case counts are high and/or increasing with hospital bed utilization and intensive care unit utilization rates high.

Based on the Oct 28 COVID Situational Report of DOH-6 regional office, Leonardia said the growth in new cases has been decreasing in the past two consecutive weeks.

The mayor added that the average daily attack rate also decreased from 21.62 percent in the previous three to four weeks of October to 13.24 percent in the recent two weeks of the same month.

“It is no surprise, therefore, that since cases are also high in the province, patients are being brought to Bacolod hospitals for treatment,” Leonardia said.

He also said that Intensive Care Unit utilization rate is at 55.56 percent, and this includes patients from other cities and towns, too.

Leonardia further pointed out that isolation facility accommodation here also significantly decreased by as much as 19.66 percent.

Bacolod City has 23,361 accumulated COVID cases and 21,660, or 92.72 percent, have since recovered.

“This decline in numbers is the result of our relentless effort in intensified implementation of the PDITR (Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate) Strategy as well as our innovations and initiatives in ramping up our vaccination campaign,” Leonardia told Duque in a letter.

“We are also continuously working to expand and capacitate our temporary treatment and monitoring facilities. We established a 64-bed Midway Referral Facility that serves as a step-up facility for patients waiting to be admitted in hospitals.”

Based on DOH-6 data, Leonardia said Bacolod has the second highest percentage of fully vaccinated population in Western Visayas at 42.28 percent.