‘STILL IN SUSPENSE’: City’s alert level status uncertain amid lower hospital utilization

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Despite a reported downtrend in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the past three days and easing hospital occupancy, Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas said on Tuesday that it was still uncertain if the city would stay under Alert Level 3 or escalate to a stricter regime.

Treñas told Daily Guardian via Viber that currently, the city may remain under Alert Level 3, but the national Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) is expected to reevaluate the city’s status on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022.

This, despite Treñas’ statement Monday evening that the city’s Health Care Utilization Rate (HCUR) is on a downtrend as most cases were mild and asymptomatic, something he attributed to the city’s high COVID vaccination rate.

HCUR refers to the percentage rate of use of COVID-dedicated beds in COVID wards, Intensive Care Units, and Isolation Units, as well as mechanical ventilators, in hospitals.

Treñas said that from over 70 percent in the last week, the HCUR has improved to only 61.45 percent.

This was due to 67 additional beds at the Western Visayas Medical Center, 10 beds at the St. Paul’s Hospital Iloilo, 6 beds at the West Visayas State University Medical Center, and 3 beds at The Medical City-Iloilo.

“We are having a decline in our [HCUR] which means most of our cases are asymptomatic to having only mild symptoms. This is a result of getting vaccinated. I hope that our HCUR continues to drop and we continue to encourage more people to get vaccinated to avoid severe effects of COVID,” he said in a statement.

The city is also currently experiencing a downtrend in cases, with 241 confirmed positive on Monday, Jan. 24, as reported by the City Epidemiological Surveillance Unit (CESU) on Tuesday.

Monday’s numbers pointed to a tapering trend if compared to cases confirmed by CESU on Jan. 23 (351), Jan. 22 (415), and the record high 637 cases on Jan. 21.

But Treñas said the lower number might be due to a delay in reporting after a scanner at the Uswag Molecular Laboratory in Molo broke down.

He added that any downtrend was not yet evident to the city government.

Department of Health-Western Visayas Center for Health Development data as of January 25 indicated that the city logged 26,933 cases (4,376 active, 21,912 recovered, and 636 dead).