WAITING FOR TOURISTS Baguio residents help keep the city’s parks alive during the pandemic. Local tourism industry workers, however, hope to see visitors back to revive businesses in the summer capital. —EV ESPIRITU
BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — The number of Cordillera patients afflicted with the more contagious variants of COVID-19 has climbed to 143, with one patient in Abra getting infected with the variant (B.1.617) first detected in India, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Tuesday.
The first known cases of the United Kingdom variant (B.1.1.7) in the region were detected in Mountain Province early this year, said Dr. Amelita Pangilinan, assistant director of the DOH in Cordillera, at a briefing.
Mountain Province also recorded its first patient with the South Africa variant (B.1.351), she said.
But Mountain Province’s 34 variant cases have been surpassed by Baguio’s tally of 38 cases, 36 of them infected with the British variant while two new cases with the South Africa variant.
Benguet province logged 23 UK variant cases and a South Africa variant case.
The country’s first UK variant fatality was recorded in Benguet. The UK variant had since killed eight Cordillera residents, most of them elderly.
Ifugao has 17 UK variant patients and five South Africa variant cases, while Kalinga hospitals have treated 19 UK variant patients.
‘Major concern’
The presence of the India variant in Abra is a major concern for Baguio, said Mayor Benjamin Magalong, adding that severe medical emergencies in the Cordillera were usually referred to the city’s hospitals.
Determining a patient’s exposure to COVID-19 variants through genome sequencing also takes time and viral transmissions may have already occurred by the time local governments are informed, Magalong said in the same briefing.
Magalong, the official overseeing the government’s contact tracing efforts, said a digital “link map” displaying the behavior of COVID-19 transmissions entering or within Baguio suggested more than 100 residents might have contracted the UK variant by now.
Government and private doctors said the recent increase in COVID-19 infections in Baguio and the rest of the Cordillera in March and April might be attributed to the variants and after the government eased travel across borders.
Magalong said Baguio had been transparent about its COVID-19 situation which saw the average cases increase to 100 a day during that period. Daily cases now average 40.The city has managed the spread of COVID-19 since October last year when it opened its borders to leisure travel, he said.
Reviving economy
“Baguio needs tourists to revive its economy,” Magalong noted, adding that only 222,000 tourists visited the city in 2020 compared to 1.7 million guests in 2019.
The Baguio tourism industry had estimated losses of about P1.8 billion because of the Luzon lockdown and the subsequent quarantine from March to June last year, Magalong said.
But compared with 2019 tourism data, an industry survey and a recent analysis of tourist expenditures by the Philippine Statistics Authority, prolonged restrictions may have cost this popular tourist destination up to P3.5 billion, he said.
“Three major restaurants closed permanently … and even small entrepreneurs won’t take out loans to rebuild because of the uncertainties,” Magalong said.
Inoculating every Baguio resident may be the ultimate solution once the 360,000 vaccines purchased from the British drugmaker AstraZeneca arrive in July.Baguio is under a general community quarantine until June 30 along with Abra, Mountain Province and Kalinga.
The city recorded a total of 12,361 COVID-19 patients, 603 of whom classified as active, as of May 31.