Tuguegarao City, Cagayan – The Octa Research Group has logged Isabela along with 9 other areas to have a very high percentage of tested people yielding positive COVID-19 results, with over 20% higher on July 22, versus the previous week.
Isabela’s provincial health office has reported a staggering 222 active COVID-19 cases on Monday, July 25, along with 31 new positive cases and 17 recoveries.
Just 5 days before the PHO’s Monday COVId-19 report, Isabela had 115 active cases, citing a speedy and hefty jump in infections.
OCTA said other areas with significantly higher positivity rates of over 20 percent are Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, Aklan, Antique, and Capiz.
Based on the set benchmark of the World Health Organization, the acceptable and safer positivity rates are below 5%, a figure quite distant from the rates recorded in the 10 areas.
Among the areas listed by OCTA, the province of Aklan has the highest number of people testing positive with a figure over 30 percent, followed by nearby province Capiz and Nueva Ecija in Luzon.
Meanwhile, the Inter-Agency Task Force told the media that the country currently has 25,000 active infections nationwide.
Despite the high numbers of fully-vaccinated Filipinos, the Department of Health has pushed for booster shots against the virus as almost 50 million still have not been given their booster shots.
The national government has also announced that a COVID-19 booster drive is set on Tuesday, July 26 to implement a wider booster rollout for a target of 23 million people in the initial 100 days of operation. TNF