City seeing more Delta, less Alpha/Beta cases

22 September 2021 – Baguio City continues to list more Delta variant cases and less Alpha and Beta cases indicative of the Delta’s prevalence now in the city.

Five more Delta cases were reported by the Philippine Genome Center in its latest posting last Sept. 20 bringing the total of known cases to 25.

No Alpha and Beta cases had been reported in the city in PGC’s last four postings dated Aug. 28, Sept. 5, 13 and 20.

The combined total of the three variants of concern is now181 (107-Alpha; 49-Beta; 25 Delta).

It was clarified that PGC’s findings were only for surveillance and not for diagnostic purposes so these are not the actual number of variant cases in the city.

“The PGC has limited resources and cannot do sequencing of all the cases.  So their biosurveillance reports can only tell the degree of affectations and spread of the variants but not the quantity or volume of the persons infected with the variants.  The figures they are releasing are only the official cases.  There are unofficial cases,” the mayor said.

Link analyses and contact tracing of the first Delta cases yielded hundreds of COVID-19 patients linked to them. “Although not genome-sequenced, we can safely assume that all of them are Delta cases, too, judging from the exponential rise in cases that we are experiencing now,” the mayor said. – Aileen P. Refuerzo