A medical worker places a swab in a vial while testing for COVID-19 a homeless person in Miami, Florida. In the Philippines, particularly in Cebu Island in Central Visayas, the local government units here are gearing up for a targeted mass testing to be implemented soon. | AP photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Central Visayas has breached 500 in the number of confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases on April 27, making it the area outside National Capital Region (NCR) with the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases.
But the Department of Health of Central Visayas (DOH – 7) attributed the continuous increase to the massive testing and widened surveillance conducted here.
The DOH-7 on April 27 recorded a total of 527 COVID-19 cases in the region, with 11 deaths and 28 laboratory negatives. The numbers included the new cases recorded in the cities of Cebu and Lapu-Lapu, with 25 and four respectively.
The recent fatality was a 17-year-old male from Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City who succumbed to COVID-19 on April 23. The patient was diagnosed in 2018 with kidney disease.
However, the DOH-7 said the case fatality rate in the region had remained at two percent, which was below the world average of 6.4 percent.
“We still maintain a low mortality rate. That means there are two deaths in every 100 people,” they said.
The agency also reiterated their observation that majority of those discovered to have COVID-19 are younger and healthier compared in the first stages of the region’s outbreak.
They said these are results of contact tracing of previously confirmed cases combined with massive testing that enabled them to widen their surveillance.
As of April 27, close to 5,000 samples from Central Visayas have been tested at the subnational level laboratory at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC).
This means that approximately 11 percent of the specimens examined yielded positive results.
VSMMC can carry out around 320 tests daily./dbs