QC Mayor Joy Belmonte in action with LGU district officers
MANILA, Philippines — New COVID-19 cases continued to decline in low risk Quezon City for the week of November 13-19 despite being the most populated (2.9M) city in Metro Manila.
OCTA Research and DOH DATA DROP recorded the lowest 39 new cases on November 18 while positivity rate fell to three percent, its lowest since last year (WHO standard-5 percent).
Internal monitoring by the QC Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance also confirmed the declining new and fresh cases daily from November 13-19, averaging at only 56.57, a huge drop from weekly average of 104 new COVID cases last year.
The QC-LGU unit also clarified that “lately reported cases” as far back as August are included in the national count creating an artificial 15 percent growth. Reproduction number remains very low at 0.60 (WHO standard-1.0), and incidence or ADAR at only 3.80 percent compared to 5.97 on November 2.
Today, the QC-LGU has fully vaccinated 1,836,821 citizens which is 108.05 percent over the target adult population to achieve population protection. About 1,950,979 adults have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines while 138,376 minors with or without comorbidities also received their first dose. Total number of administered vaccines (both first and second dose) stand at 3,839,596.
Next Monday, medical frontliners in the city will receive COVID-19 vaccine booster shots in selected hospitals and vaccination sites. Based on DOH and National Task force against COVID-19 (NTF), booster shots will be administered six months after the second dose.
Over the past months, QC Mayor Joy Belmonte has strategically addressed the pandemic situation and established necessary infrastructure such as renovated hospital facilities, testing sites, isolation facilities, a molecular laboratory, vaccination centers, a central pharmacy system, and, recently, a cold storage facility for Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines and other medicines.
She reiterated her call for all Qcitizens to remain vigilant and help sustain the declining COVID-19 cases even as more business establishments resumed operations under Alert Level 2.