DOH: Iligan City remains low risk for COVID-19

By: Cathrine Gonzales - 2 years ago

COVID-19 test_positive. STOCK PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday that Iligan City is still low risk for COVID-19 as it posted a reproduction number of just 0.89. This comes after an OCTA Research fellow said the city is experiencing an “uncharacteristic spike” in coronavirus cases.

In a tweet, OCTA Research fellow Guido David said an uncharacteristic spike in cases was observed in Iligan City and that “the reproduction number jumped from 0.40 to 2.38.”

“Is this due to Omicron? Until we find out more, it might be best to test people coming from Lanao del Norte,” he said.

In a text message to INQUIRER.net, David also explained that the DOH uses a different computation for the reproduction number, which represents the average number of individuals being infected by a patient.

But the DOH reiterated that they do not just use the reproduction number in determining if COVID-19 cases are increasing in an area.

“As of December 15, ang (the) current reproduction rate ng (of) Iligan City is 0.8947. It is less than one. The province’s current two-week growth rate is at 200 percent. Their average daily attack rate is 0.52 per 100,000 population. Their case risk classification is at low risk,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online media briefing.

“You would see that this reproduction number is really affected by a lot of factors, that’s why we don’t use it as the sole determinant if an area has increasing cases or we should be alarmed of case trends in an area. Marami pa po tayong tinitingnan (We are looking at other factors also),” she added.

According to Vergeire, Iligan City recorded an average of 27 new cases from December 2-15, higher than the average of nine cases from November 18 to December 7.

However, Vergeire stressed that these figures should still be compared with the total population and health system capacity in Iligan City in order to get the whole picture of the COVID-19 situation there.

KGA