Bacolod City, Negros Occidental— The Department of Health (DOH) confirms today, September 13, that another 9 new cases of COVID-19 Delta variant were recorded in Bacolod City as of September 12, bringing the total confirmed cases of the contagious variant to 21, according to City Administrator Em Ang, who is also the executive chair of the Emergency Operations Center of this city.
Ang said that following the release of the results from the Philippine Genome Center, all patients undergone repeat swab test and now in the quarantine facility.
The DOH also reported today a continuing increase of COVID-19 cases and has placed the city under Alert Level 4, with its ICU beds now in critical level. Per the latest case count released by DOH, the city recorded a total of 161 cases today. Of which, 159 are local cases.
Concerned over the three-digit figure rise of COVID-19 infections for three consecutive days, Bacolod City Mayor Evelio Leonardia called on 20 barangay captains for an urgent online meeting late last week to discuss the sudden surge despite the local government’s stepped up vaccination drive.
Attending the Zoom meeting were village heads, whose barangays posted the highest number of COVID-19 cases recently, in order to harmonize their responses in view of the recent spike in infections. Per latest figures released by DOH 6, a total of 84 active cases were recorded in Brgy. Mansilingan, followed by Brgy. Villamonte with 73 cases.
The mayor noted that it was the first time after almost two months that he had to talk about COVID-19 with the barangay officials. In the past two months, Bacolod witnessed the slowing down of COVID-19 cases compared to other cities in the country. From September 9 to 11, Bacolod has posted more than 100 cases each day, as shown in the Department of Health- Region 6’s COVID-19 Bulletin.
On September 9, Bacolod recorded 129 new cases; Sept.10 – 108 cases; and Sept.11 – 148 cases. “This is alarming for us, considering that it’s been quite long that we only had double-digit cases. Now we are back to having three-digit figures,” the mayor said.