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MANILA - Four out of 5 Delta COVID-19 cases in Cagayan de Oro were traced to a birthday party, Mayor Oscar Moreno said Monday.

The four patients include the city's index case and his family members who were celebrating the former's birthday when the infection happened, Moreno said.

Local authorities received a report that the four contracted the Delta variant 2 weeks after their swab test result, the mayor added.

"Nung lumabas ang report na Delta variant we redid the contact tracing. Doon nakita ko ang report towards the end of June na merong birthday party. Birthday nung index case po and ‘yung Father’s Day they also celebrated kaya 4 sa kaniyang pamilya ay tinamaan," he told ABS-CBN's Teleradyo.

(When it was reported that it was Delta variant, we redid the contact tracing. That's when we saw towards end of June that there was a birthday party. It was the birthday of the index case and they also celebrated Father's Day so 4 of his family members were infected.)

The family was again placed under temporary treatment and monitoring facilities (TTMF) even after they were tagged as recovered following the report of the Delta variant, Moreno said.

• 5 Delta COVID-19 patients in Cagayan de Oro 'recovered': mayor

The index case works in Bukidnon but his family has an apartment in Cagayan de Oro, he added.

The city's healthcare utilization rate, meantime, remains high as it caters to severe to critical virus patients in the entire region, according to the mayor.

"Kahapon (Yesterday) I monitored the hospital system sa city. Medyo dumadami sa triaging (The number of patients in triage are increasing)," he said.

The city will announce Monday over 300 new cases that were reported over the weekend, he added.

The Philippines on Sunday detected 55 more cases of the Delta variant, bringing the total for the highly transmissible variant to 119.

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