The City Health Office (CHO) said Friday that the occurrence of dengue in Puerto Princesa is on a downtrend with only 48 cases added in the last four weeks.
CHO chief Dr. Ricardo Panganiban said these cases were recorded from July 13 to August 3.
He said 48 is already low compared to the 84 they recorded from June 29 to July 20.
Panganiban said the figure can change anytime since it is still the rainy season that is why the CHO is doing its best to conduct more awareness campaigns in the city.
He said Barangays Cabayugan and Buenavista are the areas where the prevalence of dengue is high.
“Tag-ulan pa rin kaya tuloy-tuloy ang ating pagaayos ng mga apektadong lugar. Nagsasagawa din kami ng clean-up drive sa Buenavista at Cabayugan, sila kasi ang may mataas na kaso talaga,” he said.
However, he said that cases in 2018 were still higher compared to the same period this year.
To date, 487 cases have been recorded since January 2019.
“Nagkaproblema tayo doon sa dalawang barangay kasi dati wala naman talaga sila dyan. Kaya medyo tumaas ‘yong kaso. Pero kung titingnan mo naman ay mas mataas pa rin noong 2018 kasi dati 400 plus din siya pero mas mababa ‘yong ngayon,” he added.
Noel Orosco, regional epidemiology and surveillance unit coordinator, said earlier that decrease in cases can be considered if the current morbidity week (MW) is lower than the previously reported.
“Masasabi natin na bumababa ang kaso kapag ang cases reported ngayon ay bumaba compared sa previous morbidity week or kakaunti ang inire-report,” he said.
This week, the Department of Health (DOH) has declared a national dengue epidemic due to a 98% increase in the number of cases or 146,062 recorded since January up to July 20 this year.
As of current, 622 had already died due to dengue.
