Cagayan de Oro eases quarantine restrictions after consistent drop in COVID-19 cases

Cagayan de Oro is back to the less strict general community quarantine (GCQ), though still with heightened restrictions, as the city experienced a downtrend in COVID-19 infections in the past two weeks.

The city was reverted to GCQ status after Cagayan de Oro Mayor Oscar Moreno appealed to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to scale down health protocols in the city.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on Thursday, September 30, that the city will be under GCQ with heightened restrictions throughout October.

Moreno said the number of COVID-19 cases in the city steadily dropped in the final weeks of September, following months of struggle due to surges in infections.

“We saw the consistent continuing (reduction) of our average daily attack rate of COVID-19 cases from 27%  in the first week of August to 8.75% in the last week of September,” Moreno said.

The City Health Office, in its September 29 report, said it logged 47 new infections and two deaths with recoveries reaching 212 patients that day, a far cry from the numbers in the last six months when the city saw COVID-19 cases surging.

The CHO said only two patients of the 82 people who contracted the more transmissible Delta variant remained in isolation.

Dr. Ted Yu, CHO medical officer, said the 80 patients have recovered and were already sent home.

But Yu said they found 229 close contacts of the patients, isolated them, and subjected them to RT-PCR tests. – Rappler.com

Froilan Gallardo is a Mindanao-based journalist and an awardee of the Aries Rufo Journalism Fellowship.