Tuguegarao City, Cagayan – Mandatory Face Mask Policy for indoors & public enclosed areas in Tuguegarao City will start on June 7 to 21, to curb rising cases of COVID-19, the Local Government Unit. announced on Monday, June 5.
City Mayor Maila Ting-Que shared on her social media page that “the local Health Board has come out with a resolution MANDATING the USE OF FACE MASKS and other necessary Protocols for indoors/public enclosed areas, specially in malls, groceries, cinemas, schools and govt offices due to the rising number of covid-19 infections in the City as well as the alarming death rate, specifically among those unvaccinated/incomplete vaccination.”
“The mandate from June 7- 21 to try to slow down if not completely stop the spread and may be extended depending on the updates of the City Health Office,” the Mayor added.
Walk-in vaccinations against COVID-19 are still on-going at the city’s health office from Mondays to Fridays at 9AM to 4PM.
COVID-19 Uptick
An uptick in COVID-19 cases has been logged in Tuguegarao City starting April and May 2023, according to the City Health Office (CHO).
On Monday, June 5, the city logged 50 active cases with 4 new infections, zero deaths and 13 new recoveries.
During the last week of April, the city has logged 15 active cases from an almost zero daily tally.
The most notable increases were logged during the seond week of May where daily tallies of infections were over 30 and breaching 40.
It was only up until the end of May to present that the city has recorded daily active cases over 50.
COVID-19 experts from the OCTA Research Group shared that big cities like in the capital region and key cities like Tuguegarao City are prone to spikes of cases especially with new Omicron strains detected in the country.
2 weeks ago, OCTA noted an uptick in the coronavirus positivity rates in Isabela and Cagayan.
Isabela has recorded an alarming spike with 67.4%, from only 36.6% logged a week prior, topping OCTA’s current list of provinces with increasing positivity rates nationwide in end-May.
Meanwhile, nearby Cagayan province and Tuguegarao City also noted a spike with 21.6%.
According to the Department of Health, Tuguegarao in Cagayan, and the independent city of Santiago in Isabela have logged the highest numbers of active COVID-19 infections in the region as of Monday, May 22.
New Omicron Subvariants
Late last month, new cases of the highly transmissible Omicron Subvariant XBB.1.16, better known as the ‘Arcturus’ strain have been logged by the Department of Health in the country.
The Arcturus subvariant is also a ‘variant of interest’ by the World Health Organization as it has been known to be causing surges all over the world over the past month.
Although it is not known to cause severe illness, the strain is known to be very fast in transmitting, even faster than its previous substrains from Omicron. TNF
