GARDEN OF LOVE As COVID-19 cases drop in Iloilo City, Ilonggos are finding time to go outdoors and visit the newly opened Iloilo City Garden of Love in Barangay Nabitasan in La Paz District on May 14. —PHOTO COURTESY OF ILOILO CITY GOVERNMENT
ILOILO CITY—While COVID-19 cases in Western Visayas were dropping, reports of fatalities due to the virus continue to come in.
Data from the Department of Health (DOH) in Western Visayas showed that from May 1 to May 26, at least 155 new cases were reported on an average of six cases daily.
During the same period, 137 fatalities were reported.
But the DOH regional office said the number of reported fatalities did not necessarily reflect those who died within May.
“The number of deaths reflected in the daily case bulletin does not necessarily mean that the [deaths] occurred in the same reporting period,” DOH Western Visayas director Adriano Suba-an said in a statement sent to the Inquirer.
Suba-an explained that the reports on COVID-19 deaths were based on verified death certificates submitted to the regional office by the provincial/city health offices and hospitals.
“Considering that the reporting of COVID-19 deaths is dependent on the submission of verified death certificates, the number of [deaths] in the bulletin include [those] that actually occurred even in previous months,” he said.
Suba-an said the region’s current case fatality rate (CFR), or the percentage of death from among the total reported cases, was 3.14 percent as of May 24, which was higher than the national CFR of 1.6 percent.
As of May 26, 183,758 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the region, including 177,109 recoveries and 5,807 deaths.
Most of Western Visayas—or the provinces of Iloilo, Aklan, Capiz and Guimaras—are under the least restrictive alert level 1, with only the provinces of Antique and Negros Occidental under alert level 2.
The average number of daily cases in the region have dropped to seven as of May 8, down from 828 in January.
Herd immunity has not been reached in the region with 5,010,165 fully vaccinated out of the target population of 6,426,33 or 77.96 percent.
Another 183,193 residents or 2.85 percent of the target population are partially vaccinated.
READ: COVID-19 cases in Western Visayas top 100,000