Lucena City now COVID- free

LUCENA CITY — This capital city of Quezon province is COVID-19 – free as of Thursday, March 24.

The daily tally of the Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) on Thursday (March 24) showed that the only remaining COVID-19 patient in this city has recovered.

Lucena, classified as a highly urbanized city, is under the most relaxed Alert Level 1 until the end of the month.

On Dec. 20 last year, Lucena had only one remaining active infection.

But due to the public’s lax enforcement of safety protocols and the high transmission rate of the Omicron variant, Lucena reached another peak of 222 active cases on Jan. 23.

The highest single daily tally was on Oct. 13, with 571 active cases.

For the third time this month, Quezon did not record any new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, as the number of active infections in the province dropped to a single digit again since the pandemic struck  two years ago.

The IPHO daily tally showed that three COVID-19 patients on the island town of Alabat have also recovered. It also did not record any new fatalities.

On March 20 and 16, the IPHO also reported zero COVID-19 cases in the province.

As of Thursday, Quezon’s active COVID-19 cases dropped to eight.

Thirty four other towns are also COVID-free.

Data showed that the island-municipality of Alabat has the most number of active cases in the province with two followed by the municipalities of Lopez, Mauban, Mulanay, Real, San Antonio and Tayabas City with one each,

As of Thursday, Quezon has recorded 32,832 COVID-19 cases, 31,264 recoveries, and 1,560 deaths.

gsg