Tabuk City, Kalinga – Cordillera Administrative Region has already recorded three cases of Delta as of this writing, but the Province of Kalinga has not yet recorded a case of the more transmissible COVID-19 variant.
Although the province holds a record of about 144 active cases of the Covid-19 virus, none of the cases are tagged as Delta variant. Data released on August 11 showed that the province has already recorded a total of 5,185 Covid-19 cases, of which 4,960 have already recovered.
In a statement via text message, Provincial Health Officer Edward Tandingan, through Philippine Information Agency-Kalinga, stated that the discovery of 2 new cases of Delta variant in the region does not say they are from Kalinga.
This, he said, was confirmed by the Regional Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (RESU).
“At 5:45 PM (today 12 August 2021) we noted in social media (supposedly by DOH) that two new delta variant cases were discovered for CAR by the Philippine Genome Center (PGC). We did not receive any notice from RESU that any or both of the two new delta cases are from Kalinga. So that means those are not from our province. I verified with CAR RESU and they said that indeed, the two are not from Kalinga po,” Tandingan said.
Earlier on Thursday, August 12, DOH reported that 177 new cases of the Delta coronavirus variant were detected in the country, increasing the total cases to 627.
Of the new cases, the health department said that 144 are recorded locally; three returning overseas Filipino and 30 are yet to be verified.
The local cases, they said, are from National Capital Region (90 cases), CALABARZON (25 cases), Cagayan Valley (16 cases), Ilocos Region (8 cases), Cordillera Administrative Region (2 cases), Western Visayas (2 cases) and Davao Region (1 case).
Testing of Delta cases
with regard to the Delta variant, a health personnel explained in an interview that there are particular specimens selected to be sent to the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) for testing to determine their variant.
Authorities have previously explained that due to the limited capacity for sequencing, purposive sampling is done, in which specimens tested are from “areas, clusters, and groups of people" that have a higher possibility of the Covid-19 variants to be detected.
From those samples, selection will again be made based on two criteria, the specimen collected must be enough to be sequenced, and that the cycle threshold (CT) value – which measures the viral load of a patient–meets required levels of less than 30 to successfully be sequenced.
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