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CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City is planning to intensify contact tracing and testing following the rise of new Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the past weeks.
The Emergency Operations Center said that it is only through aggressive testing can the transmission of the COVID-19 be detected and prevented.
The EOC eyes the implementation of increased surveillance testing to areas with a high prevalence of the virus to track the recent spike of its cases.
Doctor Brian Albert Lim, an infectious disease expert, said that virologists and medical practitioners expected a spike would happen around mid-November.
He explained that it would take around 5 to 14 days for the virus to incubate, thus, one must observe two weeks to determine the trend of Covid.
“COVID follows human behavior. Data would show that 14 days before the spike, people were relaxed during the holidays especially during Halloween.”
With this, the EOC plans to identify the areas with prominent transmissions so intensive monitoring and surveillance can be applied.
In the most recent data of the EOC, at least 87 percent of transmissions happen outside the residences, 21 percent of which are from workplaces.
The EOC is appealing to private establishments to be more vigilant and to aggressively follow the health protocols to reduce workplace transmission. /rcg