LUCENA CITY –– Three more coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients died in Quezon, bringing the total death toll in the province to 103, authorities reported Tuesday.
The Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) said two fatalities from this city and Gumaca town were recorded on Tuesday afternoon. No other details were given on the fatalities.
On Monday, the municipal government of Lopez reported the death of a COVID-19 patient, a 62-year-old man, who died from “pneumonia and cerebrovascular accident,” while confined in a public hospital on Oct. 24.
His reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) laboratory test result, which came out on Oct. 26, turned out he was positive for COVID-19.
As of Wednesday morning, Quezon, which remains under the modified general community quarantine status, logged a total of 3,530 COVID-19 cases, 986 of which remained active.
The province recorded 2,441 recoveries.
Lucena, the capital city of the province, continued to record a spike in COVID-19 cases, with 19 new validated virus carriers listed on Tuesday afternoon, according to the tally by the city public information office.
The city also logged 216 active virus carriers and 30 fatalities, the highest tally among all local governments in Quezon.
On Tuesday, the OCTA Research, a group of experts monitoring the COVID-19 situation in the Philippines, tagged Lucena as one of the 18 localities in the country that has been classified as “high-risk” areas due to high daily caseload, attack rate, or high hospitalization occupancy.
Earlier, Lucena Mayor Roderick Alcala maintained that the surge of COVID-19 cases in his city was the result of pre-emptive and precautionary measures being implemented by the local health authorities.
Alcala explained that the city health office has been aggressive in contact tracing of previously identified COVID-19 patients.
He also maintained that the rise in the number of cases was the result of the fast turnaround of test results from a COVID-19 laboratory in the city that was partly funded by the city government.