Cebu City sees spike in deaths at home

QUARANTINE SCENE Only a few vehicles ply the streets of Cebu City while it is under modified enhanced community quarantine due to rising cases of COVID-19. —DALE G. ISRAEL

CEBU CITY—The number of residents who died at home due to probable COVID-19 infection nearly tripled in a span of two months, according to one of the officials overseeing the city government’s pandemic response.

Councilor Joel Garganera, deputy chief implementer of the city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), said they normally received reports of an average of 10 community deaths a day in June. But in August, the number increased to an average of 22 to 26 deaths daily.

Garganera said the EOC and retired military officer Mel Feliciano, deputy chief implementer of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Visayas, were forming a team to investigate community deaths or those involving people with symptoms of COVID-19 but were not confined in hospitals.

Part of the special team’s tasks was to determine if these deaths were indeed related to COVID-19.

It’s everywhereOn Aug. 9, Cebu City breached the 1,000-mark in COVID-19 deaths.

From July 1 to Aug. 10, at least 160 people died from COVID-19 in the city. Of this number, 87 died in July while 73 in the first 10 days of August. Four were fully inoculated against COVID-19 while the rest were unvaccinated.

Garganera said the four fully vaccinated fatalities had underlying health conditions. In June, all 14 patients who died of COVID-19 were unvaccinated.

“COVID is now everywhere. The cases are so spread out,” Garganera said.

He said seven of 15 hospitals in the city were already in critical level. The occupancy rate, he said, increased to 71 percent as 684 of 961 COVID-19 beds were occupied.

Cebu City Quarantine Center is also operating at full capacity.

Field hospitals

Of the city’s 80 barangays, only seven had no COVID-19 cases in the past 10 days.

As of Wednesday, Cebu City recorded 3,846 active COVID-19 cases. Since the start of the pandemic last year, the city has logged 27,945 recoveries and 1,011 deaths.

In Ilocos Norte province, Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital and Medical Center (MMMH&MC) in Laoag City started building a temporary field hospital, using donated construction materials, to address the shortage of beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients.

The 200-bed MMMH&MC, a major COVID-19 treatment center in the province and in northern Luzon, decided to construct a makeshift facility at its parking lot to serve as its triage area for suspected and probable cases of COVID-19 as the hospital hits full capacity.

According to Dr. Maria Lourdes Otayza, MMMH&MC chief, a second field hospital in the same parking lot is being built while plans are underway for a third temporary facility.

Imelda Cultural Center in the adjacent Batac City is also being eyed as a possible area for another temporary field hospital, Otayza said.

Public schools near the hospital were also tapped as health facilities where non-COVID-19 cases would be treated to ease the pressure on hospitals.

‘Unprecedented’

Otayza, in a statement, said the “unprecedented” increase in COVID-19 cases had forced the MMMH&MC to go beyond what it could actually accommodate.Aside from the COVID-19 patients in Ilocos Norte, MMMH&MC has also been admitting critical and severe cases referred by hospitals in the provinces of Abra, Cagayan, Ilocos Sur and Apayao.

Latest data from the Department of Health’s (DOH) COVID-19 tracker showed that the hospital had a “high risk” level of bed occupancy with 128 of 176 beds occupied as of Wednesday.

Governor Roque B. Ablan Sr. Memorial Hospital in Laoag City, the second biggest public hospital in Ilocos Norte, has reached critical level as 93.8 percent of its COVID-19 beds had already been occupied.

Ilocos Norte has logged at least 10,948 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, including 4,031 active infections, 6,761 recoveries and 156 deaths.

Ilocos Norte, according to the DOH, is one of the “hot spots” of COVID-19 infections outside Metro Manila.

In Baguio City, travelers, including government officials and those authorized outside their residences, will again need to be cleared by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction tests before crossing into the city regardless of their vaccination status.

The revived border rule is part of the stricter health protocols being enforced in the city against the more contagious variants of COVID-19, according to Mayor Benjamin Magalong.

The protocol, Magalong said, covers travelers from areas under the most restrictive quarantine classifications. Nonessential travel to the city remains suspended until Aug. 15.

Residents were also asked to practice double masking in public or in enclosed spaces as part of measures against the threat of COVID-19 variants, the mayor said. —WITH REPORTS FROM JOHN MICHAEL MUGAS AND VINCENT CABREZA