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NEW ABNORMAL. Life in Baguio has become more relaxed as movement restrictions eased with the reopening of businesses, including tourism in October. But everyone must be masked and work or shop within a meter of each other until the cure for coronavirus is available to everyone. PHOTO BY EV ESPIRITU
BAGUIO CITY – The number of coronavirus infections in the summer capital continued to rise with 52 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday (September 24) alone, the highest single-day record so far in the city.
Sixteen of the new patients reside in a neighborhood near the city’s slaughterhouse that was again closed for disinfection, this time until October 9, due to a COVID-19 outbreak that was detected there last week.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong also closed the cattle market for pigs and goats, while slaughterhouse employees undergo quarantine and treatment.
Since August 12, infection cases in Baguio have exploded due to accelerated testing in high-risk sectors, as well as in public workplaces such as banks and grocery stores.
The outbreak near the slaughterhouse and another village occurred two days before Baguio and the Ilocos region launched the Ridge and Reef travel corridor on September 22. This initiative allows city and Ilocos residents to travel exclusively to beaches or natural parks within these territories during the pandemic. .
The new infections brought the number of active cases to 269 and the total number of patients treated for COVID-19 since March to 681.
However, the increase was anticipated.
“We expect more cases because we did about 3,000 tests from September 17 to 19 … and by looking at the positivity rate, we can get 90 to 100 patients when the results are known,” Magalong said in a meeting on September 21. with city administrators.
Most of the patients were located by contact tracing teams, “and the tests are done at the right time,” said Dr. Donnabel Tubera-Panes, chief of the city’s infectious diseases office, during that meeting.
Some of the cases last week were attributed to suspected carriers who went into hiding. Others were blamed for an unauthorized birthday gathering and subsequent drinking spree.
Instead of a city-wide ban on alcoholic beverages, Magalong said it could enforce a street-level ban on the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages in outbreak areas so as not to disrupt food businesses as Baguio enters a “new normal”. The mayor said that distributors lose 1 million pesos a day under a general ban on alcoholic beverages.
TSB
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