FIVE days after the request to downgrade the alert level status of Bacolod City was made by Mayor Evelio Leonardia, the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) still has no reply as of Tuesday, November 2.

Although the alert level of Bacolod is still in limbo, Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran, chairman of the local IATF, said they are hopeful that Leonardia’s request will be heeded.

On October 29, 2021, Leonardia asked IATF head and Health Secretary Francisco Duque III to downgrade the city’s alert status from Alert Level 4 to Alert Level 3, noting the decrease in growth rate of Covid-19 cases for the past two weeks.

“We posted a 39 percent change in two-week growth rate (while) the average daily attack rate also decreased from 21.62 during the previous 3-4 weeks to only 13.24 percent during the recent two weeks,” he said.

He added the healthcare capacity utilization in all tertiary private and at the government-run Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH) is only at 69 percent.

Leonardia said that not all of these hospital facilities are utilized by Bacolodnons since half of the Covid-19 patients are from other towns and cities in Negros Occidental.

Records from the Emergency Operations Center showed that only 55.56 percent of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) intended for Covid-19 are utilized, while 19.66 percent of the facilities in other isolation centers are in used.

Leonardia noted that the city’s real-time data showed that there are 954 active Covid-19 cases, while there are 23,361 accumulated cases recorded in Bacolod City.

The recoveries stood at 21, 660 or 92.72 percent, which correlates to good management and treatment of Covid-19 cases, Leonardia said.

Covid-related deaths have also decreased by 55 percent from last month, he said.

“This decline in number is the result of our relentless effort in intensified implementation of the Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate (PDITR) strategy, as well as our innovations and initiatives in ramping up our vaccination campaign,” the mayor emphasized.

By ramping up the vaccination program, Leonarida said, they also expect cases to even decrease significantly in the next proceeding weeks.