New Baguio City variant cases 38

 CITY HALL BEAT

Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY --  Covid-19 new variant cases in the city rose to 38 with the detection of nine more B117 or UK variant and two B 1351 or South African variants in Covid-19 patients by the Philippine Genome Center this week. 

City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo said the age range of the patients is from two to 87 years old with 38 as average age.
    Twenty-four were female and 14 were male.
    Mayor Benjamin Magalong is of the belief that the city’s UK variant cases now run to more than a hundred and South African to more than ten based on the surge experienced by the city in the past months.

This just cannot be captured on actual time due to limitations in processing all the specimens submitted by the city to the PGC.

Galpo said the mayor’s hunch may be true based on their findings that the rate of current afflictions in the city is faster than before. 

The nine new cases belonged to clusters of cases identified in the past months.

Contact tracing and other preventive measures are currently being undertaken to break the transmission even as the public is reminded anew to continue observing health and safety measures.

 “While the new variants are more contagious, the mode of transmission remains the same and thus, the best prevention remains to be the wearing of face mask and face shield, physical distancing, proper washing of hands, avoidance of crowd, close conversation and confined spaces and proper ventilation,” the city official said.

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Baguio prevented a total of 98,215 Covid-19) cases from March 2, 2020 to Feb. 27, 2021 by implementing Prevention, Detection, Isolation, Treatment and Reintegration (PDITR) strategies.

In her report on the actions taken by the city government during the COVID-19 response planning session last May 21, City Planning and Development Coordinator Arch. Donna Tabangin said a University of the Philippines Baguio study revealed that Baguio City’s projected total number of infected individuals was 103,880 cases over said period.

“Had we not done PDITR measures, the number of our cases would have been 103,880 but since we did, we only had a total of 5,665 cases from March 2, 2020 to Feb. 27, 2021 and prevented almost 95 percent of the projected number of cases,” Tabangin stressed. 

Tabangin however said the city’s case “is not exactly a success story” as it still needs to improve its PDITR interventions in face of infection and fatality surges amid efforts to balance its way between ensuring the health and safety of the people and keeping the economy afloat.

“We do the hammer and dance such that when cases peak, we also heighten our PDITR or we keep hammering to keep the cases low.  When cases let up, we dance along with it by easing up some restrictions to ensure that economy will also pick up without compromising the health of our constituents,” she said. 

Mayor Benjamin Magalong said that while the city’s infection control and case management systems on PDITR continue to hold up, the city needs to continually fine tune its strategies and adopt innovations to attain a “whole-of-government-and-whole-of-society approach” in addressing the continuing health crisis.

So far the city had done the following strategies:

For prevention, the city’s measures focused on proactive cancellation of classes and activities that will entail mass gathering, mounting of information-education-communication campaign on minimum public health standards and disinfection measures.

On detection: contact tracing, expanded testing, e-system command center, artificial intelligence-assisted x-ray, isolation centers, targeted lockdowns, assessment of homes as quarantine facilities for overseas Filipino workers, returning Baguio residents and locally stranded individuals and  food assistance for locked down residents.

On treatment, triage system for patients, online referral system, one hospital command center and Covid-19 ward for health personnel.

Reintegration: mental health assistance, home visits for healed patients;

Re-opening: Baguio Revitalization Action for a Vibrant Economy (BRAVE) economic stimulus package, Baguio Visitor Information and Travel Assistance (VISITA); road to smart cityhood to pursue projects for digital transformation, connectivity and fibertization, Baguio in My Pocket (BIMP) and telemedicine.