President’s hometown dislodges QC
DAVAO City, the hometown of President Duterte, recorded the highest number of new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases nationwide from June 1 to 7, dislodging Quezon City which has held the top post since the pandemic hit the country.
Based on the monitoring of the independent OCTA Research Team, Davao City placed number one after seeing an average 213 daily new cases during the first week of June.
This is a 44 percent growth compared to its 147 new daily cases from the previous week.
Davao City topped erstwhile leader, Quezon City, which is now seeing an average of “only” 207 new cases daily during the same period, a decline of 27 percent from its previous average of 283 new cases per day.
Completing the Top 10 sources of new cases are Cagayan de Oro City (118), Bacolod City (112), Iloilo City (111), Manila City (102), Parañaque City (80), Pasig City (79), Caloocan City (79), and General Santos City (72).
The OCTA bulletin also showed that 12 local government units remain “areas of concern” due to their high growth rates and average daily attack rate (ADAR).
Having high growth rates are Dumaguete City (195%), Koronadal City (124%), Roxas City (55%), Cotabato City (51%), and Davao City (44%).
On the other hand, found with high ADARs are the cities of Davao (11.71), Cagayan de Oro (16.18), Bacolod (19.14), Iloilo City (23.42), General Santos (18.59), Tuguegarao (38.39), Butuan (14.66), Koronadal (29.85), Dumaguete (40.86), Cotabato (15), Batangas (11.13), and Roxas (18.99).
On Monday, the OCTA sounded the alarm over the surge in cases in seven provinces and eight cities in the Visayas and Mindanao regions, which it said were already considered “areas of concern.”
Meanwhile, in a television interview, DOH – Northern Mindanao Director Dr. Jose Llacuna lamented the worsening COVID-19 situation in the region.
He noted how the numbers have gone for the worse as compared to a month ago.
“This was not the situation one month ago. We had a lot of recovered cases, and our active infections made up just 10 percent of the tally,” said Llacuna.
As of June 7, Northern Mindanao has a total of 25,511 COVID-19 cases, including 2,922 active cases, and 3,426 reported in just the last 14 days.
Cagayan de Oro has the highest number of cases in the region with 8,892 of which 1,400 were recorded in the last 14 days only.
The hospital bed utilization rate in Cagayan de Oro is currently at 80 percent, while the ICU occupancy rate is at 68 percent.
With cases continuing to rise in several parts of the country, the Department of Health (DOH) yesterday renewed its call for the public to avoid mass gatherings as they remain prohibited in the country.
“We continue to remind the public to avoid these illegal mass gatherings,” said Vergeire in a radio interview, adding: “Let us be compliant and avoid big gatherings because these may cause high infection rate in our areas.”
Similarly, the health official called on local government units (LGUs) to do their part in ensuring adherence to the ban on mass gatherings and observance of minimum public health standards.
“Let us ensure the prohibition of holding of parties that can become super-spreader events,” Vergeire also said.
