Covid-19 cases seen to plateu

The surge in Baguio City’s coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases had shown signs of letting up, raising hopes for a plateau and eventually a downtrend in the case turnout.

Mayor Benjamin Magalong on Jan. 25 said the city’s numbers based on the various metrics have begun to decrease indicating the start of the plateau stage where cases neither go up or down en route to the downtrend stage.

“But this is if we do not experience saddling or sudden rebound in cases,” the mayor qualified.

The mayor said the plateau may have started last week and conservative projections placed it to last until this week en route to a downtrend by the second week of February.

“Downtrend is a possibility next week given the usual plateau duration of only 7 to 10 days but we want to be conservative in our projections,” he said.

City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo said the city had a 637 daily case average from Jan. 16-22 while recoveries were 419 per day.

Death average jumped from 1 to 3 per day.

The case positivity rate slightly decreased to 43.58 percent on week Jan. 26-22 from  44.10 percent in week Jan. 9-15.

The weekly infection growth rate also went down but remained above the threshold of 1 which meant that there is still an active case transmission in the city.

The average daily attack rate (ADAR) climbed to 98.1 from 61.3 and the two-week growth rate decreased to 187 percent from 1,305 percent.

Hospital care utilization rate went down to 68.7 percent from 71.47 percent while isolation facility bed occupancy was at 69.95 percent from 71.35 percent as of Jan. 24. The city’s epidemic risk level remained at critical risk also as of Jan. 24. –  Aileen P. Refuerzo