By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

Four provinces in Western Visayas, including Negros Occidental, have remained “low risk” areas for coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19, the Department of Health-Western Visayas Center for Health Development (DOH-WV CHD) said yesterday.

The other three provinces classified as “low-risk” were Antique, Capiz and Iloilo province.

Based on the DOH-6’s Community Quarantine Decision Framework, as of Sunday, June 27, the region’s most recent two-week growth rate (2WGR) is at “low” and average daily attack rate (ADAR) is at “moderate.”

The region’s 2WGR, which refers to the rate of growth of cases in an area over a 14-day period, has gone down to 25 percent in the last 14 days from 44.48 percent in the last 28 days.

Western Visayas’ ADAR, which refers to the number of cases in an area per 100,000 population over a 14-day period, has also decreased to 6.23 in the last 14 days from 8.33 in the last 28 days.

At “moderate” risk are Aklan, Guimaras, Bacolod City, and Iloilo City.

This is the first time in three weeks that the region’s two highly urbanized cities have had their risk classifications downgraded, having been considered “high” since the DOH-WV CHD report on June 5.

Meanwhile, despite being classified as “low risk” area for COVID-19, Dr. Bea Camille Natalaray, DOH-6 Medical Officer IV, said Capiz’s healthcare utilization rate (HCUR) is considered high-risk at 71.43 percent, along with Iloilo City at 81.39 percent.

HCUR refers to the numbers of beds and mechanical ventilators dedicated to COVID patients which have been used.

The region’s case fatality rate (CFR), which refers to the rate of COVID-19 deaths, has also remained at 2.27 percent, at the same rate as of June 20, but still higher than the national CFR (1.74 percent) and the global CFR (2.16 percent).

The positivity rate has continued to increase to 8.4 percent as of June 27, compared to the numbers as of June 20 (8.0 percent), June 13 (7.7 percent) and June 5 (7.3 percent).

The 2WGR, ADAR and HCUR are used by the national government to determine an area’s community quarantine status, and also used by local government units to craft and revise its COVID-19 response policies./DGB, WDJ