SCIENTIFIC and evidenced-based analysis of the Covid-19 response of city hall indicate low risk, and thus places the city under General Community Quarantine, Mayor Oscar Moreno said yesterday.
Moreno disclosed that the analytics used by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) affirm the effectiveness of the city’s Covid-19 response strategy based on active surveillance, isolation and non-pharmaceutical interventions.
“This goes to show that our combined and coordinated effort in arresting the spread of Covid-19 has so far worked and it is being recognized. Of course, this is no time that we stand down or loosen up, but at least we should find comfort in the fact that we do not have to resort to ‘lockdown’ as yet,” Moreno said.
The analytics measured case doubling time (CDT), critical care utilization rate (CCUR) and Covid-19 cases threshold per population size. The Omnibus Implementing Guidelines of EO 112 had placed Cagayan de Oro City and the rest of Northern Mindanao under GCQ based on the results of the analytics. Cagayan de Oro City is the only city listed as low risk by the IATF.
“At seven positive cases, we are less than halfway the threshold for highly urbanized cities,” said Moreno. The IATF pegged the threshold for highly urbanized cities at 15 cases. “And we are working hard to contain these,” he added.
City Health Officer (CHO) head epidemiologist Joselito Retuya said the city has low Covid-19 case doubling time or CDT of over 30 days.
In her daily virtual presser last Wednesday Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the country’s average CDT had improved from three days to seven days.
Improvement of CDT, she explained is crucial in preventing the overwhelming of the country’s health system, especially the critical care services which are needed for treatment of moderate to severe Covid-19 cases.
Moreno also praised the city hall-owned JR Borja General Hospital (JRBH and the City Health Office (CHO) for their contribution in easing the work of the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC), the Covid-19 referral facility in Northern Mindanao.
The natural birth cases at the NMMC had reduced by 50% since the Covid-19 health crises started. Moreno credited this to the JRBH and the 42 rural health units in Cagayan de Oro that are accredited by Philhealth’s Maternal Care Package which have absorbed the cases used to be served by the NMMC.
“By doing so, Cagayan de Oro is contributing to the low critical care utilization rate of the NMMC,” Moreno said.
Placing the city under ECQ is a “setback, a step backward and would bring about more human suffering than it would relief,” Moreno said.
He also showed figures of surgical and other cases served by the JRBH which showed up to 30% cases served are actually from Misamis Oriental towns and few from Northern Bukidnon.
Documents from the IATF also revealed that the critical care utilization rate for Mindanao is in the “safe zone” or around 30 percent in terms of mechanical ventilators, intensive care unit and isolation beds.
According to NMMC spokesperson Dr. Bernard Rocha, the NMMC’s Infectious and Re-emerging Infection Disease (IREID) unit so far has excess capacity. The highest they have admitted at one time since Jan. 31 was 17 patients. The hospital’s current capacity is 60 patients, but it could be expanded up to 100 patients. The JRB Hospital owned by the city government is now being prepared to handle Covid-19 cases in case the capacity of the NMMC is maxed out.
As of May 8, the IREID unit of the NMMC had 14 patients, of this, only one is for Covid. From Jan. 31, the IREID unit had admitted 117 cases.
Meanwhile, CHO and Covid-19 Emergency Operations Center head Dr. Lorraine Nery said that as of May 8, they were only attending to two Covid-19 cases, the 65 year-old wife and 31-year-old daughter of Patient 6783 who are both asymptomatic. They are now in one of the city’s isolation unit. 15 other close contacts of patient 6783 who already tested negative are on extended quarantine. They have been on quarantine since April 23. The city isolation unit as of this writing has a capacity of 515 persons.
On the other hand, Retuya said that they have isolated and scheduled for swabbing six direct contacts of the Carmen Covid-19 case, a 61-year-old woman who died at the NMMC last Tuesday. Her neighborhood in the Zayas area in Barangay Carmen have been placed on lockdown Thursday evening.
The CHO which conducts active house-to-house surveillance has so far covered 70,662 households from April 1 to May 7. So far, they have documented 2,602 cases of influenza-like and acute respiratory cases and successfully treated 1,932. As of this writing, 610 cases are still being treated and monitored by CHO health workers.
According to the isolation facilities are presently catering to 105 persons in different stages of their 14-day quarantine.
Both Moreno and Rocha asked the public not to ignore or belittle the non-pharmaceutical options.
“It is not costly, even free,” said Rocha of the non-pharmaceutical options like frequent hand washing, cough etiquette, social distancing and staying at home.
Moreno had ordered the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office to strictly implement Covid-19 policies like social distancing, the use of barangay exits passes and curfew. (BenCyrus Ellorin, contributor)
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