The Emergency Operations Center said the 160 COVID-related deaths for September was almost triple compared to the 57 mortalities recorded in August.
EOC executive director Em Ang said the figure is a new record high and almost double compared to the 76 deaths logged in September 2020.
Ang said the EOC doctors observed scary symptoms from the new patients, particularly those unvaccinated because some of the infections were fatal. The EOC believes it is not only the Delta variant that is hitting the new COVID patients but also other mutations which are more dangerous to unvaccinated patients.
Most of the casualties last month were senior citizens and already suffering severe infections before they sought treatment.
Meanwhile, nine Bacolodnons have died from the coronavirus from October 1 to 4, or an average of two deaths per day.
The COVID cases logged in the first four days of October reached 626, or an average of 116 infections per day.
Ang said this is alarming since the spike of cases has been continuing for more than three weeks already.
Hospital bed utilization rate was at 90 percent, she added.
Although some hospitals still have beds available for COVID patients, the problem is the lack of medical personnel to attend to them since a number of nurses, particularly in private hospitals, have resigned or have taken leave of absence.
In the latest meeting of the EOC members, Ang said they agreed to draft a new policy on the entry of passengers from Panay. She said they might ease the travel restrictions by no longer requiring negative RT-PCR results from passengers.
This is to give consideration to the request of the business sector to allow passengers to easily enter Bacolod City. Ang said the new policy may be announced this week.
As of Sept. 30, the city government has vaccinated 201,185 Bacolodnons, with 140,237 fully inoculated. – MML
