Mati City Information Office in its report said that the Omicron variant infection came from samples submitted for genome sequencing last month.
Six of the seven confirmed Omicron cases belong to one family that had visitors from Manila and Cebu during the holidays.
The seventh case was a returning Overseas Filipino (ROF) who was quarantined at the Davao Covid facility upon arrival at the Davao airport on December 24, 2021. The ROF had no close contact with any resident of Mati City upon arrival.
The infected family meanwhile had 12 close contacts who all turned positive with the virus.
The seven patients had long been declared as recovered by the health authorities.
The CIO reported that even before the confirmation of Omicron infection in the City of Mati, the Mati Incident Management Team (IMT) had already been implementing strict health measures to ensure that the surge of cases would be contained.
Granular lockdown in areas with several confirmed cases were implemented along with the aggressive vaccination campaign in the community.
As a result, the surge brought about by the Omicron variant is not as high as compared to the Delta variant surge back in August and September of last year where about 1,495 Matinians were confirmed infected in the two-month surge.
In January 2022, only about 694 Matinians were confirmed to have been infected with Covid-19. Though the Omicron surge is still not over, health authorities are confident that it will soon go down.
The IMT, however, advised the public to remain vigilant and strictly adhere to observing the minimum public health standards to ensure that the infection would be contained.
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