‘SOLDIER ON’: Iloilo City pushes with strategies as new cases continue to decrease

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

 

The Iloilo City government will continue with its strategies in curbing the spread of COVID-19 despite the latest report by a research group tagging the city as a high-risk area for the disease.

Mayor Jerry Treñas said City Hall is focused on implementing measures against COVID-19 after slowing down the number of infections since last week.

To note, the Iloilo City Covid-19 Emergency Operations Center (EOC) reported that they have managed to pare down the number of average daily cases from 46 in Oct 1-25, 2020 to 22 cases daily from Oct 26-Nov 1.

The EOC also reported that only nine new cases were reported by the City Epidemiology Surveillance Unit (CESU) of the City Health Office (CHO).

“The average daily case was also cut by half to 23 from 46 in October. The average daily case decreased to 20 this month. A total of 118 positive patients were recorded in various quarantine facilities as of Nov. 3. CESU-CHO recorded some 300 active cases by end of October,” it added.

Latest data from the Department of Health regional office as of Nov 4 also pointed to the same downtrend after the city only logged 9 new cases.

As of 12 pm of Nov 4, the EOC reported two new cases.

But the latest report released by OCTA Research Group on Wednesday indicated that Iloilo City is one of the nine areas in the country that are considered high risk to COVID-19.

The OCTA team is an independent and interdisciplinary research group that has been studying the COVID-19 outbreak in the Philippines. It is composed primarily of UP faculty members and alumni with contributors from the University of Santo Tomas and Providence College, USA.

Treñas reacted by saying that “we just have to live with their labels,” even as the city continues to implement strategies prescribed by experts.

Some of these strategies are testing, contact tracing, and isolation of suspected and confirmed cases.

Earlier, city COVID-19 team spokesperson Jeck Conlu attributed the slowdown in new infections to some policies imposed by the local government.

Conlu cited the restrictions to funeral wakes and burials where only immediate relatives are allowed to visit at limited times and in strict observance of health protocols such as physical distancing and wearing of masks and face shield. Wakes are only allowed for three days.

Another restriction is the imposition of liquor ban, particularly drinking in public places.

The temporary molecular laboratory in Molo district is also seen to boost the city’s testing and contact tracing capacities.

Treñas said the laboratory is expected to start operating on Nov 16.

Also, weekly random swab testing of all City Hall employees starts today, Nov 5 and every Thursday thereafter.

“This highlights the city’s efforts to ramp up its testing capacity with its own laboratory at the Alternative Learning System (ALS) Building in Molo district to be fully operational mid-November. The facility allows for early detection of cases to immediately care and isolate infected individuals to interrupt disease transmission. The city has already conducted close to 40,000 swab tests. Confirmatory testing enables to strengthen contact tracing and identify clustered cases within the community,” according to a City Hall report.

In a meeting with business groups on Tuesday, the Local Economic and Investments Promotion Office presented the business permit renewal processes for 2021 which included strategies against COVID-19.

Present in the meeting were the Iloilo Business Club, Iloilo Hotel Resorts and Restaurants Association, Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Iloilo, accounting firms, and City Hall department heads.

One strategy adopted by the city government is the establishment of off-site processing centers in malls to avoid overcrowding at the City Hall.

“We will cater 250 applicants per day at our City Hall Office as well as 250 applicants each at SM City Iloilo, Megaworld, and Iloilo Convention Center sites,” Treñas said.

 

On Wednesday, the OCTA Research Group labelled Iloilo City as “high-risk” for COVID-19 infections due to an increased number of cases per day and an alarming hospital occupancy rate in the past weeks.

The high-risk areas in Luzon are Makati City, Malabon City, Baguio City, the towns of Itogon and Tuba in Benguet, and Lucena City in Quezon.

In the Visayas and Mindanao, the high-risk areas were Iloilo City, Catarman in Northern Samar, and Pagadian City in Zamboanga Del Sur.

“We are concerned that these LGUs may experience high hospital burden in the coming weeks that may stress their health care systems and overwhelm their medical frontliners,” OCTA said in its report.

According to OCTA, these LGUs were listed as areas of concern due to the high number of cases recorded daily, high COVID-19 attack rate, and the high hospital occupancy in their communities.

The attack rate, OCTA explained, is the number of new cases per day relative to population. For example, a daily attack rate of 5 percent per 1,000 means that there are five new cases per 100,000 of the population.

“A higher attack rate means more people are getting infected,” it added.

To reverse the increase in transmission in their communities, the research team urged the identified high-risk LGUs to further intensify their efforts at testing, tracing, and isolation.

The implementation of more aggressive and effective localized lockdowns with stricter border controls is also urgently needed to suppress further viral transmissions in the high-risk LGUs, the group said.

In its October 25 to 31 monitoring report, the OCTA noted that there is still a continuous downward trend in the number of new cases in the country even with the resumption of the Philippine Red Cross testing.

OCTA added that the positivity rate in the capital region, or the share of tests that come back positive, also continues to “trend in the right direction” at 6 percent, which is now close to the World Health Organization target of 5 percent.

The reproduction number in the country, while it has slightly increased at 0.86, is still below 1, meaning that local transmissions are being controlled.

However, the team reiterated that these positive downward trends can “easily be reversed” if the government, the private sector, and the public become less vigilant and complacent in the fight against COVID-19.

Sustaining these positive trends, OCTA said, will require more significant cooperation, collaboration, and vigilance from all sectors of society.

“We urge the national and the local governments to strictly monitor and enforce compliance with minimum health standards such as physical distancing, the wearing of face masks and face shields, and proper hygiene to reverse the increase in transmissions at the community level,” it added. (With reports from Manila Bulletin and Iloilo City Hall PIO)