The Quezon City government on Wednesday (July 15) said its COVID-19 situation has continued to improve with its positivity rate settling at World Health Organization’s (WHO) ideal rate of 5%.
The OCTA Research Group stated in its latest report that the city’s positivity rate declined from the June 22 to 28 figure of 6%, which is also the regional positivity rate in Metro Manila.
“We were at 5% a week before the surge happened last February and March. This means that our cases and transmissions are well-monitored and controlled. We hope that this positivity rate shall continue to dip down in the coming weeks,” Mayor Joy Belmonte said.
The OCTA report also showed a decline in the city’s daily average COVD-19 cases from 141 to 123 last week, while its reproduction number is .86 and the average daily attack rate (ADAR) per 100,000 population is 3.91.
“We are not seeing an alarming trend, but a generally flat trend in NCR [National Capital Region]. Quezon City is, in fact, one of the local government units with incidence lower than 5 per day,” OCTA Research Fellow Dr. Guido David said.
The city government said aggressive testing and contact tracing continues, with 4,181 RT-PCR tests conducted per day between July 4 and 10, and a current contact tracing rate or the number of contacts traced per case at 28.3.
Belmonte said the Department of Health recognized Quezon City as one of the cities with the best contact tracing efforts. She added that they are also preparing for a Delta variant response plan.
The mayor said during the July 15 Laging Handa briefing that the first dose vaccination coverage in the city is already at 40%, while the second dose coverage is at 23%.
“Given the speed at which we are able to rollout, basta may bakuna [supply] na ready, sa tingin ko in a few months, kaya nang abutin ang 1.7 million na target population for population protection,” she said. – (QC)/AG-rir
