LUCENA CITY – Quezon province listed a record-high eight deaths from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in a single day, health authorities reported Saturday.
In its 10 a.m. bulletin, the Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) said two COVID-19 patients in Lucena City and one each from the towns of Sariaya, Unisan, Infanta, Gumaca, Tagkawayan and island municipality of Panukulan have all succumbed to the highly-contagious illness.
The COVID-19 death toll in the province is now 316 with 31 fatalities recorded only this month.
Lucena, the capital city of the province has the highest number of fatalities with 72.
The province has been seeing an alarming spike of COVID-19 cases with the addition of 74 new cases since the last tally on April 9 at 5.m.
From April 1 to 10, a total of 654 new COVID-19 cases were recorded. In March, a total of 825 COVID-19 cases were recorded, compared to only 342 in February.
As of April 10, Quezon has logged 8,798 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic was declared in March last year. At least 7,535 have recovered.
The province still has 947 active virus carriers which were only 597 ten days ago.
Sariaya posted the highest number of active cases in the province with 141, which were only 52 on April 1.
On April 6, Governor Danilo Suarez issued Executive Order No. 16 placing 17 municipalities in the province under the stringent general community quarantine (GCQ) status from April 7 to 21 to curb the rise of COVID-19 cases in their respective localities.
The towns now under GCQ include San Antonio, Candelaria, Tiaong, Dolores, Sariaya (2nd district); Tayabas City, Lucban, Pagbilao, Mauban, Infanta, Real, Gen. Nakar and the island town of Polillo (1st district); Macalelon (3rd district) and Guinayangan, Gumaca and the island town of Alabat (4th district).
Lucena City and the rest of 23 towns in the province will continue to remain under the most lenient “modified general community quarantine” (MGCQ) status. The province has been under MGCQ since September last year.
Out of 41 municipalities in Quezon, only the towns of Buenavista, Pitogo, Unisan and the island municipalities of Patnanungan and Perez are now considered virus-free as they no longer have any active cases as of April 10.
Those previously infected in these localities have either recovered or had died, the report showed.