Spike in virus cases in Negros Oriental linked to UK, P.3 variants

EMPTY Dumaguete City’s downtown is deserted on Day 1 of modified enhanced community quarantine on June 16. —RAFFY CABRISTANTE

DUMAGUETE CITY—Authorities in Negros Oriental believed that the rise of COVID-19 cases in the province has been caused by the coronavirus variants first found in the United Kingdom and in Central Visayas.

The provincial COVID-19 task force said the variants were highly contagious and might have infected many people in the province.

Dr. Liland Estacion, task force head, said local authorities were intensifying contact tracing and investigation on the variants upon the instruction of the Department of Health (DOH) in Central Visayas.

“It is not yet known how the two persons contracted the variants,” she said.

Estacion was referring to a patient from Tanjay City who tested positive for the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7) first found in the United Kingdom, while another patient from Dumaguete City was infected with the Theta (P.3) variant, both of which were discovered among cases in Central Visayas early this year.

Data from the Provincial Health Office showed that Dumaguete and Tanjay have the highest number of active COVID-19 cases in Negros Oriental. Dumaguete has 919 active infections while Tanjay has 262 as of June 24.

The DOH has been keeping an eye on Negros Oriental, which now has the highest number of active COVID-19 cases in the Central Visayas region, which also include the provinces of Cebu, Bohol and Siquijor. Negros Oriental currently has 2,363 active coronavirus infections.

Help came

Regional health director Dr. Jaime Bernadas said they had deployed medical personnel from other parts of the region to the province to support government and private hospitals so they could open more rooms for COVID-19 patients.

The DOH has so far sent nine Cebu-based nurses to Silliman University Medical Center in Dumaguete and five to Negros Polymedic Hospital in Sibulan town, which started operations only in November last year.

OCTA Research, a group which oversees and studies the COVID-19 situation in the country, recently announced that Dumaguete has a bed capacity of 68 percent, which was lower than in previous weeks.

The city, however, still has an average daily attack rate of 38.66. Daily attack rate is the proportion of people who become ill with or who die from a disease.

On Friday, Negros Oriental received from the national government 195 vials of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Because the province’s storage facilities did not meet the Pfizer vaccine’s storage requirements, the vaccines, totaling 1,117 doses, were quickly distributed within three days as first dose for health-care workers, senior citizens and adults with comorbidities.

The province, which previously received 10,000 vials of the China-made Sinovac vaccine, has inoculated at least 46,988 people in Negros Oriental as of Sunday, according to the Provincial Health Office. INQ