August 17, 2020 – Despite the bleak picture painted by the recent spike in Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, Baguio City continues to fare better in the protracted battle against the insidious virus.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong said that gauging from his observations as head of the country’s contact tracing program, Baguio is still on a better footing in terms of crisis management, testing capacity, contact tracing efficiency, critical care, isolation and quarantine facilities and treatment capability, all parameters of COVID-19 control effectiveness.
The mayor said the city’s cases may have been shooting up but this was expected because of the sustained targeted testing and contact tracing to hunt down the virus carriers.
“We are in control. We have situational awareness of why our cases are increasing because we were the ones who found them through expanded testing and we were able to determine who else are infected through aggressive contact tracing thus enabling us to institute measures and prevent a dire scenario,” the mayor said.
The situation is different in localities with low testing and contact testing capabilities.
“They have artificially low cases and they do not know the true situation because they do not test and trace enough,” he said.
“In fact, if we compare our testing and contact tracing efficiency rates with the other localities in terms of the number as against the population, we probably have the highest in the country,” the mayor added.
EXPANDED TESTING: WHAT HAVE WE GAINED
As of August 17, the city has a total of 253 COVID-19 cases, 90 percent or 227 of which are asymptomatics and with mild symptoms and 10 percent or 26 are moderate to severe.
Of the number of cases, a big chunk or 34 percent were a result of the expanded risk-based testing in workplaces frequented by crowd like groceries, malls, market and banks.
The city’s testing capacity is considerably higher than that of other areas in the country. The city has done a total of 32,468 swab tests vis-a-vis its floating population of 450,000. There are areas in the country with millions in population but had only done a measly 5,000 tests, according to the mayor.
Procuring test kits and pursuing expanded testing of the high risk sectors were conscious efforts on the part of the city as part of proactive surveillance to establish the true situation the ground.
Using analogy of bullets and bombs, Mayor Magalong said, “First we test individuals whom we believe are most vulnerable of being infected so we train our sights on them. Once we identify areas where infection is most prevalent, then we bombard it with tests so we could determine the extent of the infection more accurately, including asymptomatic carriers.”
City Health Officer Rowena Galpo said the city practically went in search of the infected persons by testing a random sampling of each sector’s population.
“True enough, we found them as we were testing the last of the vulnerable groups and this is when our cases soared,” Galpo said.
As the critical sectors were identified, Mayor Magalong ordered the mandatory testing of their entire workforce leading to the discovery or more cases and carrying out of control measures.
If not for the expanded or targetted testing, these cases would have continued to multiply without being detected.
The city’s testing program is complimented by the two testing facilities — the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center molecular laboratory which can process specimens within 24 to 48 hours and a private molecular lab withing six to nine hours.
THE FRUITS OF CONTACT TRACING
Analytics showed that 80 percent of the recent confirmed cases in the city are household contacts and co-workers of the existing cases.
Contact tracing aims to identify who are the high risk close contacts of a positive case. From those identified high risk contacts, swab tests are done and some of the results revealed that they are also positive.
Of the city’s 253 cases, 110 or 43 percent were found out through contact tracing.
“If we do not contact trace, we are allowing other positives who are just roaming around, mingling with us and the virus keeps on spreading. Especially if asymptomatics, who would have thought that they have the virus,” team member Mischelle Junio said.
Mayor Magalong said the city has a relatively high contact tracing efficiency rate of 1:37 which meant that for every one patient, 37 contacts are being tracked, tested, isolated or quarantined and treated eventually. In the past days, the ratio has tapered off to1:23 because of the clustering of cases who have common contacts.
The city’s rate is now being used as a benchmark in the country which has an efficiency rate of 1:4.45.
Low contact tracing capability can lead to a dire consequence. Using the city’s benchmark, the missed contacts number to more than 30 plus per patient and they freely roam around oblivious to the peril they are spreading.
The mayor said the city has set up a tight contact tracing organization of 22 teams with more than 600 members who ensure that 70 percent of the contacts have been tracked within 24 hours.
ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE CAPACITY
As part of its strategic measures, the city government put up quarantine and isolation facilities at the onset of the pandemic. Lindi Hotel served as quarantine point for some time through the kindness of its owners who allowed free use of the building.
The city later established one quarantine facility for Overseas Filipino Workers at the Teachers’ Camp with the Department of Education’s consent and a Temporary Treatment and Monitoring Facility Community Isolation Units to manage patients with mild conditions at the idle Sto. Niño Jesus Medical Center with the help of private companies and the hospital’s benevolent owners.
Recently, the Dept. of Health granted license for the quarantine facility at Teachers’ Camp to also operate as a community isolation unit with a 90-bed capacity and for the Baguio City Community Isolation Unit at Sto. Niño Jesus Medical Center to expand its bed capacity from 45 to 90.
Last August 19, City Administrator Bonifacio Dela Peña announced plans to augment Teachers’ Camp’s bed capacity to 300 in anticipation of the surge in cases due to targetted testings and to further expand Sto. Niño’s to 150 beds in three months.
Plans are also afoot for the establishment of a 16-bed temporary quarantine facility and triage at the Baguio Convention Center.
The mayor said the city has a reserved area for its quarantine needs in Tuba, Benguet apart from otjer DepEd facilities which can be tapped when the need arises.
Two triage facilities have also been set up to screen entrants, one at the Teachers’ Camp and the other at the St. Vincent Gym. The city was allowed free use of the facility by the Diocese of Baguio under Bishop Victor Bendico.
TREATMENT AND CARE
The mayor said the city has sustained its excellent treatment capability owing to the skilled and hardworking frontliners, upgraded medical facilities and the well-placed systems that ensure early detection of cases which he said is crucial to facilitate early medical intervention.
In the course of the pandemic, numerous health and critical care units had been established at the Baguio General Hospital, Fort Del Pilar Station Hospital, Baguio Medical Center, SLU Hospital of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame De Chartres and Pines City Doctors Hospital comprised of 79 bed wards, 826 isolation beds, 18 intensive care units and 18 ventilators as of August 14.
With 116 active cases as of August 17, the city’s critical care utilization rate is at 38.89 percent which is on a warning zone classification.
The city’s case recovery rate is 51.56 percent or 132 out of 256 while the fatality rate is 2.73 percent or seven out of 256 patients.
Most of those who succumbed had underlying health conditions. One was a drug user who upon checking manifestes a very low viral load and one was a victim of abortion.
“We are doing okay in so far as the management of our local pandemic is concerned,” the mayor said. ** Aileen P. Refuerzo/PIO Baguio
