Baguio sets action plan against emergence of new Covid-19 cases

CITY HALL BEAT

Aileen P. Refuerzo

  

BAGUIO CITY -- Mayor Benjamin Magalong laid down Wednesday the city’s action plan to address the emergence of new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the past days.

While agreeing that the increase in cases was expected with the start of the risk-based mass testing among health workers, the mayor expressed concern that the insufficiency of the test kits and reagents would thwart the mass testing’s aim to give a picture of the extent of infection in the city.

The mayor said that because of the problem, the city needs again to take the initiative to purchase its own test kits to close the gap even as he urged the Department of Health to do its part by providing the needed kits and consumables if it wants the mass testing to succeed.

He said with the city’s goal of testing 200 persons at risk per day, the department should provide enough testing materials as well as back-up medical personnel to undertake the tests.

“Even if we have a system in place, the problem remains if the DOH is not providing us with enough resources.  It’s like letting your soldiers go to war without providing enough ammunition.  And the true war setting is even better because you can see the enemies.  With our situation now, we are up against an unseen enemy,” the mayor said.

He said that until now the DOH had only provided 100 Real Time Polymerate Chain Reaction confirmatory swab test kits and had allocated only a total of 8,100 of such kits for the entire Northern Luzon.

He said that with the area population of 10.5 million against 8,100 test kits, only .07 percent of the population stand to be covered.

The city has four PCR machines, only one of which came from DOH.

As of today, only 2,000 RT PCR tests are left while the city’s Rapid Diagnostic Test which it solicited from private entities are now down to just 700.

“We are running out of test kits and we have barely scratched the surface.  Until now, there is still no clear picture as to the city’s true COVID picture thus we need to do some initiatives,” the mayor said.

He also pointed out the need to do resource planning for the coming months to include additional personnel to allow rest time for the existing ones.

He also sought the streamlining of testing procedure of the DOH to eliminate the lag time between the testing and in determining the results.

“We expect that the next two weeks will be challenging as our case doubling time has also decreased from the original 96 days.  We are now classified as high risk with a gloomy projection that if we fail to arrest the problem, we will have 39,000 cases by September.  So I hope we can institute the needed measures,” the mayor said.

He asked the city finance committee to work out the emergency purchase of P10 million worth of test kits.

As to PPEs, the mayor said the city has enough stock for one more month but has to work out more for its reserves.

The activation of the refurbished Sto. Niño Hospital is also being worked out as a reserve in case more infections occur.

Documents are now being fast-tracked for approval by the DOH.

City Administrator Bonifacio Dela Peña assured that the building is ready for occupancy except for logistics like security, utilities, housekeeping, administrative and medical personnel which can be prepared any time.

                ****

Mayor Magalong has beefed up further the city’s contact tracing teams in the light of the surge in Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the past days.

The mayor asked Baguio City Police Office Director P Col. Co to orient more investigators and intelligence personnel on cognitive interviewing to team up with the City Health Services Team in tracking down contacts of the new patients.

Co immediately responded and appointed six more Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)-trained investigators to the pool of contract tracers so that they now have 20 in the field, 14 from the BCPO and six from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).

City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo said the city has several contact tracing teams currently working double time.   She said one patient has an average of 50 contacts while some have as high as 100.

The mayor said they also exerting more effort to convince patients to disclose their identities to help in contact tracing.

Currently, 12 out of 30 patients responded to the mayor’s call for transparency.  The mayor said this is crucial as full disclosure helped alert contacts and cut down tracing time and resources. 

To supplement the contact tracers’ efforts, the city also utilizes a computer-aided system as a complementary tool.

Executive Asst. V Philip Puzon said that through the link analysis software, a surveillance system was formulated using support, seamless coordination and automated analysis with the following functions: enrolls and tracks suspected cases; captures symptoms, demographics, risk factors and exposures; records lab results; links confirmed cases with contacts; and monitors patient outcomes.

The tracer program strengthens active case detection through contact tracing activities, such as identification and follow-up of contacts of a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 case.