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CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City’s hospitals remain at safe levels despite the city experiencing ‘another surge’ of new COVID-19 cases.
Data from the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) showed that as of July 9, Critical Care Occupancy Rates of public and private hospitals here were at 35.1 percent and 29.9 percent respectively.
“Almost 100 na ang nahospital (were already hospitalized) from Cebu City alone, (but) our Covid Care Occupancy still (is) very much safe at 35 percent,” said Councilor Joel Garganera, EOC chief.
Critical care rates are usually gauged to determine the gravity of the COVID-19 outbreak in an area. Hospitals and health officials usually sound the alarm when occupancy levels go beyond 60 percent.
Garganera, however, said that they could further bring down present hospitalization rates if Cebu City would be provided with more resources to boost its vaccination efforts.
“We really need to be vaccinated cause it will really prevent from getting severe, hospitalized or even death,” explained Garganera.
As a result, the councilor also called for the public to ‘lobby for the steady supply of vaccines’ so the city could reach the goal of achieving herd immunity before this year ends.
“So far, layo pa kaayo ta sa tinood (we’re still far from reaching our goal). 8.3 percent pa atong na fully vaccinated sa atong eligible residents (of our eligible residents were fully vaccinated). In other words, one in every 12 pa sa atong eligible residents nga na fully vaccinated (of our eligible residents) were fully vaccinated,” Garganera pointed out.
“So (until then), we have to be compliant sa atong (in our) basic health protocol sama sa pag sul-ob ug ensakto sa face mask (like proper wearing of face masks), social distancing and proper hygiene,” he added.
Cebu City is currently experiencing ‘another surge’ of new COVID-19 cases, according to experts and authorities.
As of July 10, the latest COVID bulletin from the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) showed that the city’s number of active cases breached the 1,000-mark once again.
After they logged 114 additional patients on the same date, the number of active infections here jumped to 1,077.
Cebu City also recorded 42 newly recovered patients on July 10, bringing the total number of recoveries to 24,485.
Fortunately, there were no new COVID-related deaths on that day, keeping the toll at 886.
The city, which has been under modified general community quarantine (MGCQ), has already tallied a total of 26,448 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
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