MANILA — COVID-19 cases in Negros Occidental increased more than fourfold in a span of a month, according to Department of Health data.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing on Monday that total confirmed cases for the province increased from 762 on August 5 to 3,583 on September 5.

Vergeire said the DOH is still investigating what happened to Negros Occidental as the local government has also attributed the spike in cases to increased testing.

“They have expanded their testing and with this nakakita sila ng mas madaming positive cases (they saw more positive cases),” she said.

Back in August, the DOH said the increase in cases were attributed to locally stranded individuals (LSI) or workers from Metro Manila and other areas returning to their home provinces.

• READ: Negros Occidental logs almost 1,400 new COVID cases in 2 weeks; DOH says due to LSIs

Vergeire pointed out that 57% of the total cases were from Bacolod City.

From just 427 active cases on August 5, it rose to 2,294 on September 5. But recoveries also increased from 330 to 1,248 for the same period.

Deaths also increased from 5 in August to 41 on September 5.

Meanwhile, Cebu City’s cases increased by more than 800 during the same period (from 8,920 to 9,773).

“Makikita natin ang active cases nila bumaba talaga (We can see that their active cases really decreased). Their recoveries have also increased,” Vergeire said.

From 1,544 active cases in August 5, it went down to 476 on September 5. Meanwhile, recoveries went up from 6,988 to 8,697.

However, deaths increased by 209 in a span of the month (from 388 to 597), with the case fatality rate increasing from 4.3% in August 5 to 6.1% in September 5.

“So ang gusto naming iparating with all of these increasing numbers sana tuloy-tuloy pa rin po ang pagpapatupad ng minimum health standards in the area para so that we can continuously contain the transmission of infection,” Vergeire said.

(So what we want to say is that with all these increasing numbers, we hope minimum health standards are continuously implemented in the area so that we can continuously contain the transmission of infection.)