New COVID-19 cases in Bacolod City zoomed to 130 on Thursday, September 9, while a nearby town reported 10 deaths in the first nine days of September alone.
The daily COVID-19 tracker of the Department of Health in Western Visayas (Region 6) showed 129 new cases for Bacolod, 125 of them local transmissions.
Pulupandan town, only 27.5 kilometers south of this Bacolod, reported 10 deaths since the start of September.
The town hall flew the Philippine flag at half-mast to mourn the death of a former council member as it re-opened after a two-day closure to disinfect the premises.
“These are painful lessons. We don’t want to lose people,” municipal administrator Federico Infante Jr. told Digicast Negros.
On September 7, City Administrator Em Ang told Rappler the city would breach the 100-case mark within the week.
The city has reported entire families getting infected, including that of the province’s chief accountant, one of seven employees at city hall who tested positive for the virus.
Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia on September 9 ordered local police to help implement minimum health standards, including the ban on mass gatherings and an 8 pm-to-5 am curfew.
Ang said, however, that a big factor in the rise of cases were residents who refused to get reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests even when they were listed as close contacts of infected persons.
Many infected residents also refused to transfer to isolation facilities, thus spreading the virus within households.
This represents a setback for a city that only weeks ago earned praise for its “model pandemic program” from other Western Visayas local government units.
The chief of the largest COVID19 referral center warned on September 4 of a surge, citing poor testing capacity. Dr. Julius Drilon, head of the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH) said every positive case should lead to 10 new tests.
Ang said the official ratio is 5 tests for every positive case, although the city averages 7.
The CLMMRH has stopped admitting non-COVID-19 cases, except for “extreme emergencies,” because its COVID-19 wards and critical care units have reached full capacity.
“Our hospitals are getting full and cases continue to rise,” Ang admitted.
In Iloilo City, Mayor Jerry Treñas placed 20 more areas under granular lockdown for 72 hours on September 8, raising to 56 the number of lockdowns.
The city implements the new regime whenever two or more cases are discovered in the same area, limiting entry and exit to health workers and emergency cases. – Rappler.com
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