LUCENA CITY –– Six more patients died from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Batangas over the past two days, bringing the death toll in the province to 443.
The Batangas Public Information Office (PIO), citing bulletins from the Provincial Health Office (PHO) from March 22 to 23, disclosed that two validated virus carriers in Lipa City and another one from Santo Tomas City were added to the list of fatalities on March 22.
On March 23, three more COVID-19 patients in Batangas City and Laurel and Rosario towns also succumbed to the dreaded illness.
The current data showed that 79 virus carriers had died due to the illness since the start of 2021. Last year, the province recorded 364 COVID-19 deaths.
Batangas has recorded 14,217 COVID-19 cases and 12,753 recoveries since the pandemic was declared a year ago.
From March 1 to 23, the province recorded 1,265 new COVID-19 cases and detected an increase in the number of active virus carriers from 333 to 1,021 during the same period.
Lipa City has the highest active cases with 223, followed by Tanauan City, with 92.
On March 21, three hospitals in Lipa City advised the public to bring suspected COVID-19 cases to other medical facilities after their beds allotted for virus carriers reached capacity.
Meanwhile, Batangas Gov. Hermilando Mandanas, in his Executive Order No. 2HIM-10 issued on March 22, wants the entire province to be reverted to the stricter general community quarantine (GCQ) status to curb the rise of COVID-19 cases.
Batangas was placed under GCQ until March 31. But at least 13 towns among 34 localities in the province have been declared under modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) status, according to the PIO.
The governor said the provincial Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) wrote a letter to the Regional IATF “requesting that the component cities and municipalities that were granted an MGCQ status be escalated to GCQ status until April 4, because of the increase in the COVID-19 positive cases in the province.”
Batangas lies at the Laguna and Cavite boundaries.