FIGHTING VIRUS The Iloilo City government hopes that lower fees for COVID-19 tests will encourage more residents to have themselves tested. The city also provides free tests for symptomatic patients with doctor’s referral, close contacts of infected persons, returning overseas Filipinos and returning residents. —PHOTO COURTESY OF ILOILO CITY MAYOR’S OFFICE
ILOILO CITY—Cases of COVID-19 in Western Visayas continued to increase after four months of continued decline.
The Department of Health in Western Visayas reported that as of June 19, the average daily cases reached 19, higher than the eight average daily cases in April.
The average number of daily cases has been going down this year from 828 in January.
The cases in the region since the pandemic started reached 184,152, including 5,963 deaths and 681 patients as of June 19.
Western Visayas is under Alert Level 1, and Antique and Negros Occidental provinces are on Alert Level 2.
But a spike in cases in the past two weeks has been recorded in Iloilo City and Capiz and Guimaras provinces.
On June 20, 35 new cases were reported, including seven deaths.
The number of people fully vaccinated in the region reached 5,105,806 as of June 20. This is 79.45 percent of the target of 6,426,433.
Negros Occidental administrator Rayfrando Diaz said at least 22 local governments in the province remained under Alert Level 2 and needed to vaccinate 70 percent of their target against COVID-19 to be deescalated to Alert level 1.
“The performance of each local government, with respect to vaccination, is critical in the de-escalation of their alert levels,” he said.
Local government officials need to convince more constituents to get vaccinated.
“We are calling on the 22 local governments to help ramp up their vaccination drives,” Diaz said.