Self-discipline is one key to curbing the current Delta-driven spike in Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases and to surviving the pandemic, Baguio City health officials said.
Apart from religiously observing the minimum public health standards like the wearing of face masks, practicing good personal hygiene, physical distancing, ensuring proper ventilation and avoiding crowds, enclosed spaces and close contact conversations, people also need to practice self-restraint and do some sacrifice to stop the spread and therefore the mutation of the virus, the City Health Services Office headed by Dr. Rowena Galpo said.
“We are in the middle of the war. Our goal should be to survive and if we have to sacrifice some things then we should. We can’t play with the virus. It is its biology to mutate through and if we can’t outdo its biological function then we won’t survive as what happened to the 4.5 million who already died of the virus worldwide,” City Epidemiologist Dr. Donnabel Panes said.
Panes said that the common cause of clustering of cases in the city is some people’s irresponsibility.
“In all of the case clusters that we’ve had, there is one commonality and that is there were irresponsible persons who already had symptoms but still attended gatherings like birthdays, weddings and wakes,” Panes said.
“Our cases are not random. ‘Pag may nag-positive, asahan mo may nag-birthday o anniversary and more will turn positive to form a cluster,” she added.
“The common scenario is that a patient starts having symptoms but ignores it, stays without mask at home until the symptom worsens on day 5, seeks consult and undergoes testing of which result will come out on day 7. After 2 to 3 days, he will be fetched. All in all 9 days have passed imagine how many people you have infected at home and what more if you went out and attended a party.”
The CHSO said residents should exercise self-restraint by abstaining if possible from attending gatherings and indoor activities or if it cannot be helped, by ensuring that social health rules are strictly observed like keeping distance when eating together as it is the time when people remove their masks and converse,
In offices, workers should do away with their pantry and learn to eat alone or far from one another.
“Delta is real and it is happening in the households and within offices. Variants are real and they happen when the virus is spread from one person to another,” Panes said.
Another reminder is if one has symptoms, he or she should inform health workers at once, go on quarantine with the assumption that it is already COVID. – Aileen P. Refuerzo
