Region 6 under high risk, hospitals full, DOH says

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

The Department of Health-Western Visayas Center for Health Development’s (DOH-WV CHD) spokesperson said Thursday that the region is now under ‘High Risk’ for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and that hospitals have been “begging off” to admit more patients as they are now overloaded.

DOH-WV CHD’s Infectious Diseases Cluster Unit Head, Dr. Mary Jane Juanico, told TeleRadyo Thursday that the region logged a 1,000 percent increase in the daily average of reported COVID-19 cases.

Juanico said that from 50 new cases per day last January, an average of 600 new cases were added per day in June.

Juanico identified Iloilo, Capiz, and Aklan as the provinces that reached their peaks in cases mostly due to prohibited gatherings in Negros Occidental and Antique.

DOH-WV CHD’s latest case bulletin as of 4 p.m. of June 10 indicated that Iloilo province reported 204 new cases, while Capiz had 54 new cases, and Aklan reported 68 new cases.

“Most of the cases started rising in April. Few gatherings were identified as the source of cases. Basically, we started off with Negros Occidental, Bacolod City, and Antique. The cases crossed waters and invaded the Panay area. So now, the peaks are here in the Panay provinces like in Iloilo province, Capiz, and Aklan. Cases have also been up in Bacolod and Iloilo City,” Juanico said.

She added that the DOH-WV CHD suspected the increased movement of people amid the Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ) as one of the reasons for the increase, but she clarified that gatherings were a “more validated” source of COVID-19 transmissions.

“One of the things that we suspect is the movement of cases across islands and regions, because we had returning residents and travelers who came here from Manila, but we cannot fully account that it did come from them, because we have observed that in some of our reports that gatherings were happening,” Juanico said.

As to the capacities of hospitals, Juanico said hospitals are in full capacity and have been turning away tertiary and secondary care patients, citing that ICU bed utilization across the region has increased by 200 percent.

Tertiary care refers to specialized consultative care which are usually in-patient services, with examples such as cancer management, neurosurgery, cardiac surgery, plastic surgery, and treatment for severe burns, among others.

Secondary care is more known as “specialist care”, where doctors who specialize in a particular system in the human body would take care of the patient. Examples are clinical psychology, occupational therapy, dental care, and physical therapists.

Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas previously told Daily Guardian that city hospitals have already tapped hotels to house asymptomatic, mild, and moderate COVID-19 patients.

“Hospitals have been begging off for tertiary and secondary care because cases have doubled and because mostly these have not been mild but have been serious or critical,” Juanico said.

Despite the figures and the hospital situations in the region, Juanico said that “technically, system has improved in taking care of COVID-19 cases”, citing that the increase in COVID-19 deaths in the region was not as high as the third quarter of 2020.

As to COVID-19 vaccination in the region, Juanico said up to 250,000 individuals have been vaccinated in the region, from 1.6 million eligible individuals who were master-listed.

But numbers are still low in terms of health care workers and vaccine refusal rates were also high in some sectors, she said.

“We are a bit low in terms of health care workers among all other regions. We have covered only 70 percent, and we also have high refusal rates in some health sectors such as Barangay Health Workers and Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams. But the regional task forces have been identifying steps and strategies to address these,” Juanico said.

She also said that it still was not necessary for the region to elevate to a stricter community quarantine regime, citing Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) guidance.

“If we follow the observance of [IATF-MEID] guidance, it does not mean that if cases are high, we automatically escalate to a higher quarantine classification. We still go on the monitoring of the implementation of the ‘Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegration’ strategies, if they are being enforced. That is what we are enhancing and strengthening with our local governments,” she said.

ACTIVE CASES BREACH 10,000-MARK

The full data of the DOH-WV CHD as of June 10 indicated that Western Visayas has 53,400 COVID-19 cases, including 10,050 active cases, 42,070 recoveries, and 1,264 deaths.

Region 6 also posted its highest number of additional cases in a day with 828 new cases on Thursday, bringing the total active cases in the region to 10,050.

Out of the 828 new cases, four areas in the region logged three-digit numbers in terms of local cases with Negros Occidental posting the highest number of new cases at 208, followed by Iloilo province (204), Bacolod City (138), and Iloilo City (101).

The health department also noted the increase in the symptomatic cases being detected in the region. Of the total number of active cases, 62.31% are asymptomatic; 33.16% manifest mild symptoms; 2.06 percent have moderate symptoms; while 2.40% are severe and .07% are critical.

Based on the bulletin, 816 of the cases are all local transmission, nine are locally stranded individuals (LSIs), and three are authorized persons outside of residence (APORs).

DOH-6 also logged 282 additional recoveries and 13 deaths.

Due to the surge in cases in the past weeks, the over-all registered cases in the region climbed to 52,573 cases with 41,789 recoveries and 1,251 deaths.

Several areas in Western Visayas have been listed as among areas of concern in the country due to their rising new COVID-19 cases and high average daily attack rates, healthcare utilization rate, and ICU utilization rate.

The list included Iloilo City, Bacolod City and Roxas City.

Octa Research group had noted a significant surge in cases in Visayas and Mindanao.

Iloilo City and Roxas City have been placed under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) until the second week of June while all the other areas in Western Visayas remain under the modified general community quarantine status (MGCQ). (With a report from ERS)