Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte, citing a latest report from the University of the Philippines-OCTA Research team, said Tuesday the city had maintained a significant decline in the daily new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case for the fourth straight week.
The OCTA Research report indicated that the number of daily new cases based on onset, per data from the Department of Health, dropped from 438 between Aug. 8 and Aug. 14 to 334 on Aug. 15 to Aug. 21.
From Aug. 22-28, the number of daily new cases plunged further to 288, 250 from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4 and 196 from Sept. 5 to Sept. 11.
The figures were even lower based on the data from the City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit, going from 205 last Aug. 11 to Aug. 17 to 102 from Sept. 8 to Sept. 14.
“In a span of one month, we have managed to reduce the number of daily cases by 50 percent. This only shows that our efforts to control the spread of the virus are working,” Belmonte said.
“However, we should not be that complacent. We continue to be cautious so we could prevent the spread of the virus, especially in public places, at home and in workplaces,” she added.
The research group noted another drop in the reproduction number or in the movement of the virus from 0.92 on Aug. 31 to Sept. 6 to 0.79 last week, which was lower compared to the reproduction number of the National Capital Region and the whole country.
Reproduction number indicates how contagious an infectious disease is and its reproduction number as well, and that it also tells the average number of people who would contract a contagious disease from an infected person.
Dr. Ranjit Rye of OCTA Research said the city must ramp up testing to reach the positivity rate of 10 percent.
“As of now, the city has an 11-percent positivity rate. The more tests you conduct, the more we can go out of the uncertainty and the better for the city,” he said.
Dr. Rolly Cruz, CESU head, said the city is one of the most aggressive local government units as far as testing is concerned with an average of 600 to 800 tests per day.
“It is a challenge for our community-based testing sites to do more tests since the national government through testing czar Vince Dizon has been actively helping us,” he said.
Ex-councilor Joseph Juico, the QC COVID-19 Task Force head, said an intensified testing is a good complement to the city government’s molecular laboratory that could conduct 500 tests per day.
“We are slowly closing in on our target of 1,000 tests per day,” he said.
The Quezon city government previously announced its partnership with OCTA Research, an independent research group composed of scholars from the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas, to provide weekly and bi-monthly comprehensive reports on the COVID-19 trends in the city.
“Having OCTA Research as our partner gives credibility to our initiatives and data analytics. It helps us to surgically address flattening the curve,” Belmonte said.
Quezon City is using mathematical and scientific tools to better monitor the contagion of the disease and in turn calculate its initiatives against COVID-19.
