WHILE the Department of Health (DOH) has agreed with the OCTA Research Team that presented data showing a decrease in daily Covid-19 cases recorded in the National Capital Region (NCR) and improvement in the capacity of hospitals, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said these do not yet represent a “significant” trend.
“The data given by the OCTA is correct. We can really see a decrease in the number of cases recorded,” Vergeire said in Filipino during Monday’s online media forum of the Department of Health (DOH).
“But just like what we’ve been saying, it’s not just the numbers we look at. We are also looking at our health-care system. So, if the cases will go down, hopefully, the hospital will also be decongested,” she added.
According to the OCTA Research, the daily average cases in NCR is at 3,144 which is lower, compared to the 5,500 cases in March. The group also reported that the reproduction number in NCR is down to 0.83 from 2 in March.
Although the intensive care unit beds are still full, OCTA also noted an improvement in the hospital capacity at 56 percent.
Vergeire agreed with this saying: “We have seen a downward trend in our admissions and decongestion in our hospitals but these are not significant yet.
“So, this is not for all of us to be complacent at this point. We will continue to watch this decrease in the number of cases. Hopefully, this becomes significant when we try to look at [the improvement of the capacity of] the health-care system also.”
The daily average attack rate, Vergeire also said, decreased from 34 cases per 100,000 population (4,748 cases reported per day on April 4 to 17) to 25 cases (3,490 cases reported per day April 18 to May 1).
Covid cases
On Monday, the DOH logged 7,255 additional Covid-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1, 062,225.
There were also 9,214 recoveries and 94 deaths.
Of the total number of cases, 6.5 percent (69,466) are active cases, 91.8 percent (975,234) have recovered, 1.65 percent (17,525) have died.
Moreover, 51 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
All laboratories were operational on May 1, 2021 while 15 laboratories were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
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