BACOLOD City – With a total of 4,298 people having recuperated from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), this city’s recovery rate for the disease has touched 90 percent, data from the City Health Office (CHO) showed.
This achievement, according to the CHO, is matched by the declining number of active COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.
Bacolod has a total of 4,750 confirmed cases since the enforcement of community quarantine in March.
On Oct. 27, the CHO recorded only one additional case, the lowest single-day COVID-19 recording in several months.
On the same day, the CHO also reported 330 active cases, or 6.95 percent, who are all recovering in various isolation facilities. There were 122 deaths or 2.57 percent of the total cases.
Mayor Evelio Leonardia said the development is a “big thing” for Bacolod.
“There was really a system. There were things that we did that resulted to this,” he added.
Leonardia said the last time Bacolod recorded a zero single-day case was around April or May.
He noted that in August, the city had an average of 39 cases a day, but the figures spiked to a daily average of 87 cases by September.
However, in the first two weeks of October cases, eventually went down to only an average of 23 cases a day.
Through the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) supervised by Melquiades Feliciano, chief implementer of the Inter-Agency Task Force-Visayas, the city government implemented various interventions and systems to contain local transmission.
These included the creation of the One Hospital Command Center, setting up of the Bacolod City COVID-19 Contact Tracing (BaC-Trac) system and the conduct of “mass” and surveillance tests, among others.
Even as the COVID-19 cases continue to decrease in Bacolod, Feliciano urged residents of Bacolod with early symptoms of COVID-19 to seek immediate medical attention.
“Strict monitoring of symptomatic individuals is important for them to avoid developing moderate to severe symptoms that could lead to hospitalization, and worst – death,” he said.
Data from the EOC Task Force showed that in October, 157 out of 706 individuals with flu-like symptoms have tested positive for COVID-19, which translates into a positivity rate of 22.24 percent.
Residents can avail themselves of free consultation and swabbing at the Bacolod Respiratory Outpatient Center inside the BAYS Center, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays to Fridays. (With a report from PNA/PN)
