 Welcome to the Stop COVID-Dets webinar series brought to you by the University of the Philippines. The Stop COVID-Dets shorts make it easier for you to go to the presentations that you are interested in. I'm Dr. Raymond Sarmiento, Director of the National Telehealth Center. And I'm Dr. Susy Pineda Mercado, Adjunct Faculty of the National Telehealth Center. Together, let's stop COVID-Dets. This time, I'll be discussing the situation of my beloved, our beloved Kagayan Bali and how it stood at the test of time of this pandemic. Aropo is a challenge and it has become a daily learning experience for everyone. Lalu-lala na po sa mga health workers dito sa mga reyong. We have learned to capacitate each one's strength and have worked in partnership with everyone, including the community involved in the fight. Kagayan Bali is composed of five provinces po with 3.6 million. And it's located in the northeastern section of the Luzon Island. Baka hindi pa po kasi alam at may quiz kayo kung saan nakalagay ito kagayan Bali. It's composed of Batanes, Kagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, and Kirino. I'd like to discuss to you, ila na huba naging kaso namin dito sa reyong? As of yesterday, meronapo tayong confirmed cases na $88,679. At madagdag nga po kaha po ang highest namin since we started doing the surveillance, 1,324 cases for a day. With 2,676 deaths, medyo mataas po ang ating case fatality rate of 3.01. And nakakagulatin po ang casatality rate namin, which is at 32.8%. Record hypo siya dito po sa aming reyong. This slide will show the epidemic curve in our region from January 2021 up to the present. It is noteworthy that our areas with outbreak are our four centers of trade, namely, Santiago City, Tugegaro City, Kawayan City, and Ilagan City. Nakakitarin po natin dito sa ating timeline that the peak of cases were seen to have followed the detection of the local variants of concern. First in March, with the detection of the beta and the alpha variant, and followed in the month of July with the detection of the first case of the delta variant. If we talk about the epidemic risk classification of the entire region, it falls under high risk. Santiago City, which is an independent city located in region 2, also falls under critical risk. The province of Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, and Pirino remains at high risk specification, including Batanes, which is now flagged as high risk due to the detection of three new cases of COVID. We also would like to say that recently siya po ay na-affectuhan ng bagyo at kasalo ko yung nag-recover ko mayo. Kagayan province is at moderate risk. The healthcare utilization rate is at 85.98% while ICU utilization rate is at 88.83%. Going to critical na po kami. Today, mayo na po tayong 122 recorded delta cases in the region. All provinces have recorded cases except for Batanes. Overall po, the entire region is at alert level 4. Maganda po ang participasyon ng ating government hospitals as well as private hospitals. Don't po sa itin na lagan natin. Na dapat po ang meron silang at least 50% bed na iaanokit po sa COVID for government and 30% for private. You could say in this slide that it surpassed for the government the number of beds at 50.43% and it surpassed 15% of ICU beds with 21.72%. COVID mortality trend shows that deaths peak in the month of August though it is seen in the graph that it has already started to increase in April when local variants of concern have been detected. Sa ngayon po, mayo dumadami talaga po ang naman. It's very, very sad to hear and see that there are still cases dying particularly even in level 3 of course and our private hospitals which are level 2 hospitals. For the information of everyone, there are only 3 level 3 hospitals in the region and these are all DOH retained hospitals. One in Kagayan province, Kagayan Valley Medical Center, one in Isabela which is Decent, southern Isabela Medical Center and one in Nueva Vizcaya, the Region 2 Trauma and Medical Center. Testing capacity of Region 2 has increased and is now at 4,442 per day with five molecular laboratories in the region. This is attributable to the Trace Test and Trip or the P3 program which targets to ramp up the testing capacity. However, there are testing challenges namely number one, jida areas of difficulty or even have no access to RTPC or laboratories. There's limited RTPC or testing kits and rapid antigen test kits. There's also shortage of laboratory staff due to them being infected with COVID-19 leading to longer turnaround time. Again, it's very sad to say. Now, there's a lot of health care workers now being positive and of course, if their colleagues are close contacts, nang ubusan na din po ng health workers dito po sa ating rahiyon na magdyu-duti po sa ating mga hospital. This is the greatest challenge that I am facing right now. And the last among the testing challenges, number four is that dada walang po ang provincia na meron kami molecular lab which is Kagayan and Isabela and the other provinces, Bataan, Esquerina, Nueva Vizcaya have yet to put up at least a single or just one molecular laboratory. Tingnan naman po natin ang ating vaccine statistics in line with our preventive tech, isolate trip and the integrate plus strategy yung plus point vaccination. Vaccine statistics show that our vaccination coverage is at 50, 16.54% of our target population which is 2.58 million. This is 70% of the population. And we think that it's still very low. With a breakdown of coverage, we could see that among the frontline health care workers, senior citizens, persons with comorbidities, essential sectors in daigin population priority group BNC are shown on this bottom part of the slide. Senior citizens having the most number of fully vaccinated individuals at 204,745. This is the latest data as of yesterday. Now, let me have some innovations. Let me discuss some innovations for vaccination which include the flying vaccination teams which are composed of our own staff assisting in areas with very low coverage mostly hard to reach areas. We also have the rest, Bacuna Unwills initiated again by the Department of Health Regional Office No. 2 pinartner po namin siya doon sa Philippine Red Cross Bacuna Bus to reach geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas or the Gita areas. And promising. Marami po talaga ang hubunta dahil gusto na po nila talagang magpabakuna. Ang malaga lang sana madagdagan po po ang Bacuna ng anong rayon at madagdagan pa rin po ang ang aming vaccination teams considering there's there's a lot of healthcare workers na po na nagpapositi po. For a more appealing and easy to remember facts on vaccination, naglaunch po kami ng Rest Bacuna Jingle which was composed by our own staff and a TikTok challenge so it's also done for all the local government units who wish to join. Some LGUs also have set up Rest Bacuna Pantry giving Ayuda to those who have been vaccinated and those who wish to be vaccinated. And provided transportation assistance to vaccinees going to vaccination sites. Social media posting on best practices on vaccination was done to encourage local government units to do the same or to do better in vaccination. Innovations and extraordinary measures taken at the regional, provincial and municipal level on the PDIPR strategies into the following. On prevention, number one. In the past month, local transmission has been seen in workplaces with poor administrative and engineering protocol. And in order to address this an initiative of our own region's regional task force and interagency task force is the creation of a sub-task group on workplace management composed of several agencies to name a few. The Office of Civil Defense, of course the Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Labor and Employment and the Civil Service Commission. This monitors implementation of minimum public health standards in workplace settings. Empowering national government agencies, DOCCIS and private institutions and even state universities to have their own COVID response teams called COVID worth, which stands for workplace response teams for health has greatly helped decrease workplace transmission by early detection and isolation of cases. To add, we also have initiated the COVID wars meaning workplace alert system which notifies the COVID response teams of symptomatic or close contact employees. The establishment of communication bureau which includes local government units, national government agencies, information officers, media and other stakeholders which aims to inform and educate the community at the ground level by focusing on IEC campaigns that are translated to our very own dialects was also established. That's for the prevention. Now, let me go to the for the detect strategy. These are the innovations. We created our own COVID-19 information system in region to tag as COVID CODA which enables all disease reporting units access real time data including release of RTPCR results. We have also established the collaborating centers for disease prevention and control in our own office which is composed of the Kagayan Bali Epidemiology Center its training component, diagnostics and laboratory center also located in our regional office and the disaster reduction for health center. The centers are responsible for the coordinated COVID-19 response approach. In addition, we launched the conduct of the applied epidemiology training program and data management and analytics training to equip our epidemiology and surveillance units both at the regional, provincial and local levels other local levels to conduct prompt and efficient surveillance and epidemiology investigations. This is actually a nine month program modular and this ensures act which stands for accurate complete and timely data. Lastly, we have organized a regional contact training team specific for variants of concern composed of interagency personnel in order to strengthen and improve the efficiency of contact tracing of VOCs or variants of concern. For the treatment strategy as an initiative the one line are offering non-stop health services and linkages in nations, emergencies and disasters was established at the regional level provincial and provincial level in order to hasten the referral process and avoid delay in patient care. We also have the mental health network services which includes the following components this is the regional mental health council during COVID-19 pandemic the UNAWA education of MHGAP strategy in COVID-19 management the MITSA the supporting health facilities and LGU mental networking program initiatives and of course our networking for all the mental health and psychosocial support training for NGA Now let me discuss the LGU innovations on prevent strategies the different medium for IEC materials used of Bandilyo, social media platform, regular radiating and local TV programs among others for the defense strategy the LGU's use of the academic develop contact tracing application such as health guard was utilized Ilagan city which is a city in Isabella establish its own COVID-19 molecular laboratory other LGU innovations and the second partnership it volunteer doctors in the region for patients and quarantine to conduct telemedicine and tele consultations mental health services provided in the community such as quarantine therapy for batanes, ikumustahan for Nueva Vizcaya and the adoption of project Gabay in all provinces LGU's recognize the importance of mental health as part of the response As an ending slide the COVID-19 pandemic has really shaken heavily everyone of us it became a global health crisis that has affected how we see the world and how we get to spend our daily lives but as they say which we should never lose hope as to what the future may bring the most important thing now is how we get up together to win this battle Thank you and I am sure we will recover as one Mabalo which is thank you in Imanap We hope that you learn this much as we did from that excellent presentation We also hope that you will join us every Friday from 12 noon to 2pm Manila time on Zoom, Facebook or YouTube So stay safe stay connected and see you online