The COVID-19 situation in Quezon City continues to improve week by week as vaccination efforts and granular lockdowns prove to be effective, according to the report of the OCTA Research Group.

For the week of June 15 to 21, OCTA reported that the average daily cases was reduced to 154 from 167 last June 8 to 14. The daily attack rate per 100,000 population is also down to 4.90, compared to 5.30 the previous week.

The reproduction rate slightly increased to 1.08 while the positivity rate remains at 7%. The hospital bed occupancy in Quezon City is 53% and ICU occupancy is 55%, which are both within the safe levels prescribed by Department of Health (DOH).

The city’s Average Daily Attack Rate per 100,000 is now 4.90, a significant drop from 37.58 in early April. ADAR is one of the two indicators being used by the Inter-agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to determine the quarantine mode of a city or province. A high ADAR indicates a high risk of getting COVID-19 in the city. An ADAR of less than one means low risk, 1-7 is moderate and more than that is considered high.

OCTA Research Group Fellow Dr. Guido David said that the improvements are consistent for the past weeks and moving towards better trends in the weeks to come.

“The decrease was a bit slower this week but what is important is that it is trending downward. Compared to the peak of the surge, we are at a safe level now as every indicative number has improved,” Dr. David said.

While this is good news, Mayor Joy Belmonte said that this must be sustained for the next weeks until the active cases have decreased to none.

“Efforts on improving our situation must continue until the last case recovers. We will continue to control the spread so that these numbers will continue to drop, through the help of our frontliners whom we consider as modern-day heroes,” Mayor Belmonte said.

As of June 23, the City Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance Unit reported that active cases in the city are at 1,578 or 1.6% of the total COVID-19 cases of 100,943.

The city’s vaccination program also contributes to the improved numbers. On June 23, the QCProtektodo Vaccination Program posted a new record as it vaccinated 45,136 in one day, surpassing its own record for the third consecutive day. The day before, the city posted a record of 41,826 administered doses.

Prior to hitting these numbers, the city has been consistently reaching big numbers such as having around 27,000 vaccinees for three consecutive days last June 17 to 19 and more than 37,000 last Monday, June 21.

As of June 23, the city government has administered 733,008 vaccines to 557,132 individuals with first doses, and 175,876 individuals with complete two doses.

Further, areas under special concern lockdown were reduced to 9 as of June 24 after peaking by as much as 55 areas in April.

“This is a great development considering the peak of surge we experienced early April. It has been proven again that these granular lockdowns contribute greatly in mitigating further spread in communities,” Mayor Belmonte said.

Areas like compounds, alleys, or streets are placed under special concern lockdown after being identified by the City Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance Unit (CESU) to have a clustering of cases and where quarantine measures are difficult to implement.

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