CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews / 18 Jan) – Fewer people infected with COVID-19 are getting confined or spending time in the city’s hospitals despite the spike in the number of infections because of the city’s high vaccination rate, officials said.
A senior citizen gets her second dose of Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 in Cagayan de Oro City. MindaNews file photo by FROILAN GALLARDO
Dr. Teodoro Yu, medical officer at the City Health Office (CHO), said during Monday’s daily briefer on COVID-19 that as of Jan. 16, 86 percent of the city’s target population for vaccination already had their second dose.
The city, he said, targets to vaccinate 574,491 residents, including children aged 12 and above.
In his presentation, Yu said 551,330 Kagay-anons already had their first dose, while 494,458 already had their second dose. He said 42,805 already had their third (or booster) dose.
“Our vaccination has helped those who got infected. They did not have severe or critical cases anymore,” Mayor Oscar Moreno said during the briefer. “We know that if people are vaccinated, there is really some level of protection,” he added.
“The new cases now are milder and recoveries are faster,” Yu pointed out.
He said the mass vaccination enabled hospitals to discharge COVID-19 patients faster given that many of the vaccinated who get confined experience milder symptoms, unlike in 2021 – particularly from July to August – when the city’s hospital system was overstretched and nearly collapsed due to a surge in the number of infections.
The CHO counted 124 new COVID-19 infections over the weekend. Of the newly infected, only 32 people or 25.8 percent were admitted to the state-run Northern Mindanao Medical Center, the region’s primary referral hospital for COVID-19 cases.
Yu said the majority of the cases were either asymptomatic or have milder symptoms, and those taken for observation were brought to quarantine facilities and to a new hospital built by the city government in Barangay San Simon.
“This is the difference between now and that of last year’s upsurge. The vaccines are protecting the residents,” Moreno said.
While the world’s health experts have acknowledged that the current spike in COVID-19 cases is caused by the highly contagious but milder Omicron variant, there is no confirmed active Omicron variant in Region 10.
Earlier this month, Dr. Jasper Kent Ola, head of the Department of Health 10 Regional Epidemiology, Surveillance and Disaster Response Unit (RESDRU), said that a 40-year-old resident of Iligan City working as a seaman in Kenya was found positive of COVID-19 during his quarantine in Cebu in December.
He was later declared having recovered and allowed to proceed to Iligan on Dec. 30. It was only on Jan. 7 that the Philippine Genome Center informed DOH-10 officials that the Iligan resident was found positive of the Omicron variant.
DOH-10 Regional Director Jose Llacuna Jr. also revealed the case of a 20-year-old female college student from Las Vegas who was supposed to come home for the holidays. She was under quarantine in Manila when found to be infected with the Omicron variant and was thus not able to board her flight to Cagayan de Oro, he added.
Moreno, however, cautioned those inoculated against complacency, saying that the vaccines don’t promise a cure but merely increase the people’s fighting chance against the virus.
The city government has continued to ramp up the local COVID-19 vaccination rollout in the hope that more would opt to get inoculated and receive their booster shots.
Cagayan de Oro logged its first COVID-related death this year on Jan. 15. The patient was a 45-year-old man who had been vaccinated but had comorbidities.
Among the new COVID-19 cases in the city is a nurse who was infected by her fellow medical front liners in a private hospital.
Moreno said the city government has been preparing its medical teams and facilities in case the number of COVID-19 cases continue to increase in the following weeks.
He said an entire floor at the JR Borja Memorial General Hospital, which is run by the city government, with a 60-bed capacity would be opened and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) would set up a 100-bed modular facility at the said hospital this week.
Cagayan de Oro has 21,031 cumulative COVID-19 cases as of Jan. 16, with 19,621 recoveries against 854 deaths, and 556 active cases. (Froilan Gallardo / MindaNews)
