SAN JUAN CITY residents receive a single dose of Janssen vaccines on July 21. FILE PHOTO/NIÑO JESUS ORBETA
MANILA, Philippines — San Juan City’s active COVID-19 cases ballooned to 255 in just a matter of days, a significant increase from the local government’s figures in December.
“As of yesterday, San Juan has 255 active cases. Please note that last December 14, we only had five and this was the lowest number that we ever reached ever since COVID-19 started,” Mayor Francis Zamora said on ANC’s Headstart on Tuesday.
“December 27 we had 12, and each day since then, the numbers have increased. So, we are really seeing a spike,” he added.
On the last day of 2021, the city’s active COVID-19 cases surpassed 100.
“That is why I voted for the resolution proposed by our fellow members in the Metro Manila Council to restrict the movement of unvaccinated individuals because I personally believe as mayor that they are really very prone to the virus at this point,” Zamora explained.
Based on the resolution, unvaccinated individuals must remain in their residences except when procuring and availing essential goods and services or going to work.
However, unvaccinated workers are required to present a negative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test, at their own expense, every two weeks to be allowed for on-site work.
Zamora lamented that he has never observed an “exponential” rise in COVID-19 infections like the current one that is happening.
“I’ve never seen an increase this exponential in the last one year and 10 months. It is the first time I’ve seen doubling and tripling of cases on a daily basis,” he said.
Moreover, Zamora pointed out that 98.5 percent of the 255 active cases are mild or asymptomatic cases.
“We have 255 active cases, 14.51 percent are asymptomatic. Now, 83.92 percent are mild, 0.78 are moderate, 0.78 are severe, and zero percent are critical,” he said.
“So what does this mean? Ninety-eight point five percent of our cases are either just mild to asymptomatic and this means that the vaccines are working,” continued Zamora.
The mayor then reminded the people that vaccines are effective against the coronavirus.
“I don’t want people to think na ‘sayang, nagpabakuna kami, magkaka-COVID naman kami,’” he said.
(I don’t want people to think, “what a waste, we are vaccinated yet we contracted COVID.”)
“Isipin natin na dahil bakunado tayo at nagka-COVID tayo (Let us think that because we are vaccinated, even we get COVID), we remain to be just mild to asymptomatic and that is the protection that we all want,” Zamora went on.
Currently, Metro Manila is under Alert Level 3 until January 15.