The Quezon City government on Saturday, June 11, explained its new Covid-19 early warning system, confirming that the city’s was raised to a “yellow warning” status after it listed an average of 26 cases per day as of June 9.
This is after a “leaked” report from the City Epidemiology and Disaster Surveillance Unit (CESU) containing it’s analysis of the city’s Covid-19 weekly growth rate or average daily cases and other indicators circulated on social media.
In an online press conference on Saturday, Dr. Rolly Cruz, CESU head, said that the early warning system, currently on its pilot run, is intended to be an internal report to provide the local leaders and decision-makers with evidence-based assessments on the city’s Covid-19 status for them to have a proactive response on the disease. He said that it is not for public consumption.
He also presented the same report, dated June 9, which tagged Quezon City with a “yellow warning” status.
According to Cruz, the new early warning system checks on four indicators which are the daily positivity rate with seven- day moving average or the daily proportion of individuals who testes positive out of the total testings done within a seven-day time frame, reproduction number or the number of individuals that a Covid positive individual will infect, the weekly growth rate (average daily cases) or the amount of increase and decrease in number of cases, and the average daily attack rate (ADAR) or the proportion of infeced individuals per unit (100,000. population) within a specific time range.
It uses three colors to classify the status of infection in the city - white, for below average and all indicators are stable; yellow, if cases are seen increasing compared to the previous week and three of the four indicators were above the normal rates; and red, if the cases continues to increase and the indicators remain high.
The CESU report showed that the city’s average daily cases is at 26 as of June 9, while reproduction rate also went up to 3.4 from 1.1 percent (previous recored is dated May 27 to June 2). The positivity rate also went up to 3.10 coming from 1.50 percent.
He added that the city was placed under “yellow warning” status since they found an increase in the rates of three indicators - daily average cases, reproduction rate, and positivity rate - to alert the city officials and units for a possible surge in the next 14 days.
The CESU head also clarified that the early warning system should not be confused with the official alert level system of the Inter-Agency task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF).
“Our local early warning system is helpful in assessing the pandemic within our city only. It aids our department as well as our city officials in the systematic monitoring of new cases, analysis of trends, and recommendation of strategic measures to prevent the further spread of infections. Official alert level announcements and general guidelines will still come from the IATF,” Cruz said.
Meanwhile, Mayor Joy Belmonte reminded the “QCitizens to continue observing health protocols and advised those unvaccinated to get their Covid-19 jabs.
“We have come a long way but the virus is still with us. Again, we call on our residents to remain vigilant,” she said.
As of June 11, the city has 213 Covid-19 active cases out of its 262,639 total cases recorded, with 1,730 deaths and 260,696 recoveries.
Read more: https://mb.com.ph/2022/06/02/qc-govt-develops-early-warning-system-for-covid-19-monitoring/