Lipa City has no new reported COVID-19 cases for 12 days

LIPA CITY, Philippines (The Filipino Connection) — This city has gone 12 consecutive days without reporting a new COVID-19 infection.

In a report issued 4 p.m, Thursday, the Department of Health – Calabarzon said Lipa still has 54 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 37 recoveries and nine fatalities. The said total has not moved since May 31 when the city last reported an infection.  

A 42-year-old female uniformed personnel from Fernando Airbase tested positive for the virus. The said patient is asymptomatic or showed no signs or symptoms of the disease. The patient has since been put in an isolation facility while authorities are conducting contact tracing.

While the confirmed COVID-19 infections have noyt increased for nearly two weeks, two more patients, who previously tested positive for the novel coronavirus have recovered.

A 78-year-old man from Barangay Tambo recovered from the virus on June 6 and a 54-year-old man from Barangay Sabang on June 8, respectively.

Minus the said recoveries vis-à-vis the nine deaths reported, Lipa now only has eight active cases.

Earlier on May 11, Mayor Eric Africa announced in his Facebook video message that 1,111 individuals have undergone a swab test as a means to trace the possible carriers of the virus.

The said mass testing prioritized frontliners, which includes among others city government employees, health workers, barangay functionaries and policemen.

The city government has spent P5 million for the swab test.

“We are conducting mass testing (of suspected carriers) to be able to identify our capacity. It’s important for us to test not only those who have symptoms (of COVID-19) but more importantly the frontliners who are usually exposed to many people,” Africa said.

Recently, the mayor also announced that the DOH has approved the city’s COVID-19 testing laboratory that is expected to beef up the city’s testing capacity to 100 tests daily.

The Filipino Connection is a regional partner of Philstar.com.