The Department of Health in Western Visayas placed Bacolod City on Alert Level 3 due to the sudden spike of fresh COVID-19 cases, while Negros Occidental remains on Alert Level 2.
The DOH 6 said the COVID risk transmission of Bacolod City is at moderate, while Negros Occidental is on minimal risk transmission.
Bacolod’s Average Daily Attack Rate (ADAR), or the number of new cases over the past 14 days per 100,000 population, and the two-week growth rate (2WGR), which compared the number of new cases in the two previous weeks, also went up.
Emergency Operations Center executive director Em Ang clarified that, as of Jan. 7, Bacolod remained on Alert Level 2 as per the COVID restriction classification of the National Inter-Agency Task Force.
The alert level classification of the national IATF is on quarantine restriction imposed on certain areas and used to be labeled as enhanced community quarantine, modified ECQ, general community quarantine, and MGCQ.
The DOH classification focuses on the ADAR, risk transmission, and 2WGR, and the category of a certain area may escalate or deescalate, depending on these factors.
Ang stressed it is only the national IATF that is authorized to categorize a place under a certain alert level.
But she admitted an increase of cases in the past two days, adding that 34 were logged Jan. 6, and another 36 new infections today, Jan. 7.
Bacolod has 187 active COVID cases, as of Jan. 7.
She said three members of a family from Iloilo, who are partially vaccinated, were found positive of COVID after one of them showed symptoms of the dreaded disease.
They are now in an isolation facility of the city, Ang said.
She added that some travelers from Manila have also been discovered as COVID infected after they showed symptoms days after they arrived in Bacolod. | MML
