QC breaks COVID vaccination record anew; execs say situation improving

Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte. INQUIRER file photo / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines — The COVID-19 situation in Quezon City is seen to be improving as the city government broke its vaccination record anew.

In a statement Thursday, the local government said its vaccination program was able to surpass its own record for the third time for vaccinating in a single day a total of 45,136 people compared with the previous day’s record of 41,826 people.

The city government said it has been consistently reaching big numbers such as having around 27,000 COVID-19 vaccines for three consecutive days on June 17 to 19 and more than 37,000 last Monday, June 21.

As of June 23, Wednesday, the city government had administered a total of 733,008 COVID-19 vaccines to 557,132 individuals with first doses, and 175,876 have completed the two doses.

Citing the Octa research team’s report, QC said its average daily cases for this week dropped to 154 from 164 on June 8 to 14. The daily attack rate per 100,000 population also fell at 4.90 compared with last week’s 5.30.

Both hospital and ICU beds occupancy in the city are within the safe levels with 53 percent and 55 percent level of occupancy rate respectively.

QC said a significant drop was also noticed in the city’s average daily attack rate (ADAR) which is now at 4.90 from 37.58 in early April. ADAR is one of the two indicators being used by the Inter-agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases to determine the quarantine mode of a city or province.

As for the areas of concern, the lockdowns were reduced to 9 areas from 55 in April, QC said.

The City Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance Unit also reported 1,578 active cases in the city or 1.6 percent of 100,943 of its COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday.

Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte also assured the public that these measures will be sustained until there are no more active cases left in the city.

“This is a great development considering the peak of surge we experienced early April. It has been proven again that these granular lockdowns contribute greatly in mitigating further spread in communities,” she said in a press release on Thursday.

“Efforts on improving our situation must continue until the last case recovers. We will continue to control the spread so that these numbers will continue to drop, through the help of our frontliners whom we consider as modern-day heroes,” Mayor Belmonte said

Dr. Guido David, an OCTA research group fellow mentioned that if the improvements will continue then the city can expect better trends in the coming weeks.

“The decrease was a bit slower this week but what is important is that it is trending downward. Compared to the peak of the surge, we are at a safe level now as every indicative number has improved,” Dr. David said.

As of June 23, the COVID-19 cases in the country have now reached 1,372,232 composed of 49,862 active cases, 1,298,442 recoveries, and 23,928 deaths. — Sofia Vertucio, trainee

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