THE active cases of Cagayan de Oro City breached the thousand mark Wednesday with 103 new cases and its chief epidemiology saying the spike could continue.
The request of Mayor Oscar S. Moreno to increase the city's daily vaccine allocation however got the nod of the country's vaccine czar retired general Carlito Valdez. Moreno's political ally and Palace peace consultant Ariel Hernandez relayed the information after he meet the vaccine czar in Manila last Tuesday.
A grim looking Moreno faced the public for the city's 360th daily press briefing Wednesday, saying that for as long as the city's isolation, temporary treatment and Oro hospital's critical care facilities can carry, the city would soldier on with the Modified General Community Quarantine status. He had however said that the Inter Agency Task Force on Covid 19 may have the final say.
Seeming lost for word, Moreno said: Bug-at na gyud kaayo, but maintained a lockdown would bring more dire consequences on the poor who are already taking the brunt of a shrinking economy brought by the Covid pandemic.
"But as much as possible, we have to do everything we can to slow down the spread of COVID-19 to avoid elevating our quarantine status. We at City Hall are doing everything we can by providing additional facilities (and counter-measures like curfew). (The change in quarantine status is) because our case doubling time and critical care utilization rate (CCUR) are rising to uncomfortable levels," Mayor Moreno said during Wednesday noon´s City Hall press briefing.
Last week, Moreno appealed for the people to stay home and religiously observe minimum health protocols as a way of reciprocating government's and medical frontliners' efforts to treat those who contracted the SarsCov2 virus, while admitting the city's hospitals, temporsrt treatment facilities and community isolatipn units are already burdened
Last Sunday the executive order extending curfew hours from 10pm - 4am to 9pm to 4am took effect.
It remains to be seen if the public would heed the mayor's in the coming days, especially that the City Health Office's chief epidemiologist Dr. Joselito Retuya said the spike could continue. While announcing the new high last Wednesday, and quipping, a substantial number of test results are still pending from the various RT-PCR laboratories in the city.
As of Wednesday, 253 Covid patients are confined in various hospitals in the city. 127 are confined at the NMMC, 126 in various hospitals. Of the 253 confined, 10 are patients from outside the city.
Silver lining
Amid the sharp spike in cases, Cagayan de Oro remains to have the lowest cumulative cases among highly urbanized cities without ever declaring a lockdown. General Santos has the lowest but had at one time locked down in the earlier periods of the pandemic.
By June, the city's daily vaccine allocation will be more than tripled at 5,000 doses. This information was relayed to Moreno by Hernandez after a meeting with Galvez.
In response, Mayor Moreno ordered City Health Officer Lorraine Nery to mobilize more vaccine , team to be able to handle 5,000 vaccinees everyday. The logistics head og the Covid Emergency Operations Center Dr. William Bernardo also sent out calls for more volunteer doctors, nurses and other medical professionals. The city's current daily inoculation capacity is at 1,500 doses.
"This is a race against time. We hope to have as many people inoculated in order to achieve herd immunity," said Moreno. Studies have indicated that herd immunity against Covid starts to set in as around 70% of the population gets the anti-Covid jab.
Known causes
Mayor Moreno's insistence on non-pharmaceutical intervention is anchored on the analysis by the City Health Office of the new cases. The CHO listed group travel outside the city or 'outing' is the number one cause, followed by birthday parties, wakes and funerals and other gatherings.
"We don´t want to restrict business but we cannot sacrifice public health. And the bottomline solution to lower the risk level in Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental and northern Mindanao is for the public to cooperate and comply with minimum public health standards in order to slow down the spread of the virus," Mayor Moreno said.
Listed as the 7th most competitive highly urbanized city by the Dept. of Trade and Industry, Cagayan de Oro, with over 800,000 people is core of the emerging 4th metropolitan cities in the country. Its daytime population could go by as much as 1.5 million, as people from Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon and the Lanao provinces flock to the city for business, shopping and leisure. (CBC)
