The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday logged 235 additional Covid-19 cases, the lowest daily infection rate recorded yet for this year, but warned that active cases in the country may reach 9,338 on January 31, 2022 based on the agency’s projections.
In a Kapihan Session, Dr. Alethea De Guzman, DOH Epidemiology Bureau director, said that the bases for these projections were several assumptions such as the presence of the Delta variant, vaccination coverage, mobility and compliance to the minimum public health standards. In these projections, it was assumed that the Delta variant is dominant in most regions.
In the national projection, vaccination rate was assumed that there would be full vaccination of 85 percent of the total population by end of January 2022.
“What are the scenarios that can affect the continuous decline in cases? As we go more mobile, maybe we can’t be compliant as before like masking, physical distancing, and avoiding crowded places,” de Guzman said.
Based on their projections, if compliance to minimum public health standards will decline by 30 percent, 8,600 active cases will be recorded on December 31,2021, and 9,338 by end of January 2022.
“This is still lower as compared to our active cases as of date,” the DOH official added.
Minimal risk classification
DE Guzman said that the Philippines and all its regions are at minimal risk case classification with negative two-week growth rate and average daily attack rate of less than 1 per 100,000 population in the current week.
The health systems capacity is at low risk in all areas.
“National and majority of regions at minimal-risk case classification with sustained low case trend in the recent week, she said adding that all provinces, highly-urbanized cities and independent component cities of areas remain under Alert Level 2 with minimal to low risk case classification.
Meanwhile, with the emergence of Omicron variant in other countries, de Guzman stressed the need to enhance preventive measures and prepare our borders and local health systems.
Covid cases
With the 235 additional cases recorded, the total number of infections is now at 2,836,868.
There were also 780 recoveries 10 deaths.
Of the 235 reported cases, 228 (97 percent) occurred within the recent 14 days (December 1-December 14, 2021).
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were National Capital Region (53 or 23 percent) Region 4-A (23 or 10 percent) and Region 3 (20 or 9 percent).
Of the 10 deaths, nine occurred in December 2021 (90 percent), and one in October 2021 (10 percent) due to late encoding of death information to COVIDKaya.
“This issue is currently being coordinated with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Units to ensure information is up to date,” DOH said.
Five duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 4 are recoveries.
In addition, 165 cases were found to have tested negative and have been removed from the total case count. Of these, 161 are recoveries.
Moreover, three cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
Four laboratories were not operational on December 12, 2021, while 8 labs were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
Based on data in the last 14 days, the 12 labs contribute, on average, 1.5 percent of samples tested and 2.6 percent of positive individuals.
