February 07, 2022
CEBU CITY reported 143 new coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2022, a massive decline from the record-high 1,126 new cases recorded last Jan. 20.
The city’s active cases on Feb. 6 stood at 5,347, also down from the city’s all-time high of 7,663 active cases recorded last Jan. 27.
The surge in cases in the city this year is believed to be driven by the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
“Two weeks have been gone since we recorded our highest daily cases at 1,126. Thereafter, we have monitored that the numbers were consistently following a decreasing pathway,” said City Councilor Joel Garganera, deputy chief implementer of the city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
“We’ve noticed that all the epidemiologic statistics were unanimously in the same decreasing pattern too,” he added.
The EOC reported that Cebu City’s daily positivity rate (DPR) stood at 15.68 percent, from 912 individuals tested on Feb. 6.
“It’s a significant decrease, but our PR (positivity rate) is still way above the WHO (World Health Organization) threshold of five percent,” Garganera said.
The WHO says a positivity rate of less than five percent for the last two weeks is one of the indicators that the epidemic has been controlled.
Positivity rate, or percent positive, is the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that come out positive.
Cebu City logged a record-high 56.62 percent positivity rate last Jan. 21.
The EOC reported 588 recoveries and two new deaths on Feb. 6, bringing the total number of deaths for the month to 13.
“We’re still in the midst of this pandemic. The only consolation, perhaps, is that Omicron came too fast, and we hope they’re gone too soon,” Garganera said.
In the 23 months of the pandemic, Covid-19 fatalities in the city have reached 1,632, of whom 33 were minors. Of the number, 12 were one year old and below.
Of the 1,632 deaths, 70 died in January 2022, while 13 so far have died in the first six days of this month alone.
Central Visayas
As for Central Visayas, the Department of Health (DOH) clarified that only 161 children have died due to Covid-19, and not 202 as reported last Friday, Feb. 4.
DOH Chief Pathologist Dr. Mary Jean Loreche issued the correction during a press briefer at the Visayan Vaccination Operations Center Monday, Feb. 7.
Loreche said that this is the verified number from April 2020 to January 2022.
Of the 161 children who died, 121 were children under one year old to 12 years old, while 40 were those 13 to 18 years old, said Loreche.
According to Loreche, adult mortalities were recorded and carried over to the children mortality data, which caused the mix-up.
“That’s the beauty of having our data validated and verified. I will not be embarrassed to correct the numbers that I reported last Friday since it is important to review the numbers,” Loreche said.
Loreche added that they are still verifying how many of those who died in the 13-18-year-old bracket were fully vaccinated.
As for both adults and minors in Cebu island, from Feb. 1 to 5, the DOH 7 has recorded 22 Covid-19 related deaths in Cebu’s private hospitals, of whom 14 of were unvaccinated.
Over the same period, public hospitals in Cebu tallied 30 deaths, of whom 29 were unvaccinated.
Nationwide tally
The DOH reported 6,835 additional cases of Covid-19 in the country on Monday, Feb. 7, pushing the nationwide tally to 3,616,387.
This is the lowest single-day tally this month and the seventh straight day when new cases were below 10,000.
The DOH said that of the new cases reported Monday, 6,673 (98 percent) occurred within the last 14 days (Jan. 25 – Feb. 7, 2022).
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were the National Capital Region with 949 cases, or 14 percent, Western Visayas with 822 or 12 percent and Central Visayas with 624 or nine percent.
The positivity rate went down to 19.1 percent from Sunday’s (Feb. 6) 21.5 percent.
This was based on the 36,773 samples tested last Feb. 5, said the DOH.
There were also 16,330 new patients who recovered from Covid-19, bringing the total number of recoveries to 3,445,129, or a recovery rate of 95.3 percent.
The death toll rose to 54,538 with 12 new mortalities reported Monday.
The 12 reported deaths occurred in January 2022.
The DOH said the late reporting of additional deaths was due to late encoding of death information to its epidemiology surveillance system CovidKaya.
The country’s intensive care unit (ICU) utilization rate stood at 41 percent, while isolation beds nationwide remained 37 percent occupied. (KAL with PAC, IRT, LMY / SunStar Philippines)