Pasay Mayor’s Claim (Partly) belied by DOH Data
Pasay City Mayor Emi Calixto-Rubiano said on April 18, 2021 that “they have seen a drop in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases from three digits down to two digits in the past three weeks due to the city’s contact tracing efforts.”
So let’s unpack the claims into two parts. First is the claim that Pasay’s cases have gone down.
“197 a day noon…pero ngayon po bumababa po kami ng 80, 70, 60”
Here, the DOH data confirms this. In the last 3 months starting from February, the case counts were 1,895, 7,244 and the MID-April figure shows much lower numbers at 2,183. But this is still no reason to rejoice. The mid-April figure is still higher than February’s 1,895 cases.
On the second point, was the drop solely due to the “aggressive contact tracing” or was it due to the 2 week lockdown currently in place?
On this point, the Mayor should have looked at the DOH data. This data shows the contrary:
In fact, the chart shows that the latest cases were ALL NOT Home Quarantined. So where did the disconnect come from?
Were ENOUGH of the new cases IDENTIFIED by Pasay’s contact tracing teams? At 1:30 ratio set by Contact Tracing Czar Mayor Benjamin Magallong, the present 2,183 cases should have produced 65,490 exposed individuals. According to the press released by Pasay Mayor Emi Calixto-Rubiano, their teams were only able to do 33,000. This is roughly HALF of the target metric.
And besides were these identified persons placed on home quarantine? The data suggest that No, they were not. Since NONE of the new cases were home quarantined. This suggest that Pasay’s containment strategy is failing.
Perhaps, Mayor Emi Calixto-Rubiano needs to revisit their containment strategy. She needs to ensure that containment means both contact tracing AND quarantine to go hand in hand.
For Sunburst Radial Chart of nationwide DOH stats, visit this link:
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1592276/