Omicron surge controlled in 28 days

Mayor Benjamin Magalong has declared the surge driven by the omicron variant under control after 28 days.

The mayor during the management committee meeting Feb. 8 said this was based on the graph indicators and metrics plotting the city’s COVID-19 cases.

As with the peak caused by the delta variant late last year which the city managed to bring down the cases after 1 month and 17 days, the mayor assessed the city’s response to the omicron wave as adequate.

The mayor said the city’s case reproduction number (Rt) went above 1.0 starting Dec. 23 and was back to below 1.0 after 28 days.

“We were proactive and we prepared well.  We had good teamwork and a supportive community,” the mayor said.

Cases during the omicron surge jumped to an average of 87 daily during week Jan. 2-8, drastically increased to 403 in week Jan. 9-15 and peaked to 637 a day in week  Jan. 16-22 before going down to 334 daily in week Jan. 23-29. 

City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo in her report on Feb. 8 said average daily cases further went down to 113 on week Jan. 30-Feb. 5.

The city’s epidemic risk level was down to moderate risk starting the other week.

The case positivity rate also decreased to 24.42 percent from the previous week’s 39.7 percent.  The highest positivity rate reached by the city during this peak was at 48 percent from Jan. 9-15.

The weekly infection growth rate is now 0.47 percent or less than 1 which means that transmission has started to decrease.  This went as high as 7.71 on Jan. 2-8 and 6.9 on Jan. 9-15 before going down to 0.77 on Jan. 23-29.

The average daily attack rate (ADAR) plunged to 35/100,000 population from 75/100,000 and the two-week growth rate decreased to -73 percent from as high as 187 percent.

The daily average test was 606 in the past two weeks.

Hospital care utilization rate went down to 54.42 percent while isolation facility bed occupancy further decreased to 14.91 percent from 30.14 percent. – Aileen P. Refuerzo