COVID-19 deaths in Cebu City: Mostly unvaccinated individuals

Cebu City on July 26, 2021, began its rollout of J&J COVID-19 vaccines for senior citizens at the NOAH complex. | CDN Digital file photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City logged 31 COVID-19 related deaths as of August 3.

A total of 82 others were also reported for the month of July.

However, this does not necessarily mean that the deaths actually happened during the period.  Some of these may have happened earlier but were only reported on said dates, says Councilor Joel Garganera, chief implementer of the city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

But one thing for sure, the number of COVID-related deaths is again increasing in Cebu City, Garganera added.

And most, if not all, of those who succumbed to the infection were unvaccinated individuals, he said.

Garganera reiterated his call for all of the city residents to have themselves vaccinated for their protection against the deadly infection.

“Three weeks ago, we only experienced four, five deaths a day, nya nagkasaka (now it it increasing), karon ten to eleven a day. If we maintain these [number of] deaths per day, ig human sa month moabot na tag (when the month ends we will already have) 300, parehas na ta (same as) last year,” said Garganera.

He also stressed on the need to comply with health protocols.

Still, Garganera feels relieved that the city’s death count do not include frontliners.

At least 132 of the city’s frontliners are now in isolation after they also got the infection.

READ: 132 Cebu City resident frontliners hit with COVID-19

But they are lucky that they none of them exhibited serious symptoms since 131 of them were already vaccinated.

Doctor Bryan Lim, an infectious disease expert, said many medical frontliners are now working 16 to 48 hours straight and this has made them more vulnerable to COVID-19

Lim said that if active cases continue to rise, this will take its toll on the health care system and more are expected to die. / dcb