- MITCH M. LIPA
The 38 COVID-related deaths in Bacolod City this month is a cause for concern, Emergency Operations Center executive director Em Ang said.
Ang said that for the whole month of April, Bacolod logged 30 deaths.
She said 79 percent of the new deaths in Bacolod City were senior citizens with underlying illnesses, like cancer, dialysis patients, those with heart problem and other health issues.
The other fatalities were persons with comorbidities.
The latest COVID status of the City is still considered a big concern, Ang said, adding that based on the daily bulletin from various molecular laboratories, an increase of cases was noted for a couple of days, a slight drop for a day, and then a series of increases in the following days.
The EOC is recommending to the barangays to implement granular lockdowns in areas where new positive cases were recorded. More than 90 percent of the new cases were local transmissions and those who tested positive were asymptomatic.
“This means the problem is again the movement of people,” Ang said.
Meanwhile, Mayor Evelio Leonardia issued Executive Order no. 28, series of 2021, establishing the guidelines for hospital-supervised home isolation for asymptomatic, mild, or moderate COVID-19 cases in Bacolod.
This is one way to ease hospital admissions of mild and moderate cases, and an answer for asymptomatic patients, who refused to be extracted and preferred to be isolated in their house, with a separate room and living space, than to be brought to isolation centers, mostly in schools.
The arrangement is now allowed as long as there is a doctor checking the patient every day and his or her situation monitored closely.
The establishment of a COVID maternity clinic is also being eyed in the city’s isolation facility in Barangay Alijis. Sixteen rooms in the 64-room structure donated by the Department of Public Works and Highways will be utilized as a maternity clinic for pregnant women, who tested positive for COVID, so that their needs will be attended to while in isolation.
Ang said there are 30 patients who are pregnant.
Pregnant women are prone to COVID infection because of the hormonal changes in their bodies, she said, adding that doctors from the lying-in clinics and the City Health Office will be detailed to the COVID maternity clinic, aside from doctors regularly assigned in the healing center. — MML
