BY ADRIAN P. NEMES III
More isolation facilities in Bacolod City are being prepared in anticipation of sudden surge of Covid-19 cases, executive director Em Ang of the Emergency Operations Center said yesterday.
Ang said that, based on the opinion of experts, Covid-19 cases in the country may reach two million by this month and four million before the end of the year and the peak is expected to occur from September 7 to 17.
The EOC currently monitors several Covid-19 patients with low cycle threshold as they could be infected by the Delta variant.
Ang explained that cycle threshold refers to the number of times that the Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction machines spins in a given time and if the number of spin is lower than 30, it means the viral load is high.
She said it is an indication that the owner of the specimen could be infected by a highly contagious variant of Covid, such as Delta.
Ang lamented that the problem they have right now is that, “by the time we receive the result of the genome sequencing, the patient has already recuperated.”
She said that, as of now, among the ways to combat the surge of Covid, aside from following health protocols, is vaccination.
EOC records show that Bacolod has administered 224,976 vaccines, with 94,411 residents fully vaccinated and 164,429 others have received their first dose.*
