New wave of COVID-19 cases in Baguio attributed to mobility, lag time testing

Baguio City, Philippines – The recent new wave of Covid-19 cases in Baguio City is partly due to increased mobility and lag-time testing, according to a report by Baguio City PIO.

City Epidemiologist Dr. Donnabel Panes said they expect that the uptick in cases of COVID-19 in the city shall continue as they find ongoing active transmission.

Panes said that the more relaxed in people’s mobility and lag time in testing is partly blamed in the upsurge of cases. However, she said, they will sustain more aggressive testing and contact tracing effort to detect COVID-19 cases among the city’s residents.

Meantime City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo, as quoted by the report, said the dramatic increase in cases of the disease in the city last week. “Since Nov. 7 up to the third week of December, there was a decrease in the number of active cases but (since) last week, the cases have increased from 4 to 63,” Galpo revealed saying that infection rate rose from 0.2 percent to 2.72 percent in just a week.

“Although it is still below the threshold of 5, the fact that it increased is already significant,” Galpo added.

On January 6, 2022, The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) classified the city under Alert Level 3 that shall take effect from January 9, 2022, until January 15, 2022, following the recommendation of its sub-Technical Working Group on Data Analytics.

Baguio City could expect more cases

With the threat of the more transmissible Omicron variant, Galpo disclosed that the city ‘had prepared a contingency plan with improvements done based on the experience from the delta wave.’

“Based on the experience of other countries, omicron is more transmissible, thus we expect more cases. The good news is it has less severe symptoms, so we see less hospitalization. However, the tendency is that it could overwhelm the isolation units since there will be more asymptomatic to mild cases,” Galpo said.

Earlier this week French Scientists revealed in their findings that Omicron Variant is 105 percent more transmissible than Delta. Nevertheless, several recent studies suggest that Omicron is less likely to make people seriously ill compared to previous variants.

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