Cases of COVID-19 in Cebu City remain high despite its enhanced community quarantine status. photo by Dale Israel, Inquirer Visayas
CEBU CITY — In the past two days, deaths due to COVID-19 remained high in Cebu City despite its enhanced community quarantine status, the only area in the country still under the strictest quarantine measure.
Data from the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) showed that 97 new cases and 26 deaths were reported on July 9 while 72 new cases and 20 new deaths were recorded the next day.
Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, DOH-7 spokesperson, explained that the reported deaths on July 9 and 10 were cumulative from different dates and did not necessarily mean that the patients died on those days that these were reported.
“There are documents that need to be complied and submitted to the health office and the registrar. Thus, the cumulative numbers,” Loreche said in a Viber message.
Loreche said these were not considered backlogs since reporting of deaths required more time and dependent on some factors, including how soon the attending physicians could fill up the forms and the family could provide the needed information.
The high number of deaths could be attributed to the delay of some patients to seek medical help, said Loreche.
Aside from that, there were also patients who died of other diseases.
“But because they were tested for COVID-19 too, then they got registered as COVID-19” Loreche added.
But the Interagency Task Force on COVID-19 said that the infections in Cebu were on a downtrend.
The entire Cebu island had 284 new cases on July 8; 242 on July 9; and, 181 on July 10.
As of 10 p.m. of July 10, the entire Cebu Island had a total of 11,467 infections with 526 deaths and 4,784 recoveries.
Most of the cases were in Cebu City with 7,246 and Cebu province, at 1,907 infections with 60 new cases and 2 new deaths.
Mandaue City had 1,205 cases with 26 new infections and 4 new deaths.
COVID-19 cases in Lapu-Lapu City went up to 1,109 with 23 new cases and two new deaths.