The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday reported that the country’s health-care utilization rate (HCUR) of priority regions are at moderate to high risk levels, while intensive care unit (ICU) utilization of each region has remained high to critical risk.
As of April 18, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the latest Health Facility Capacity Report showed that the HCUR in the National Capital Region (NCR) is at a moderate risk of 67 percent, Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR): 76 percent (high risk), Region 2 at 80 percent (high risk), Region 3 at 61 percent (moderate risk), and Region 4-A at 70 percent (high risk).
For the ICU utilization rate, NCR is high risk at 84 percent, CAR: 73 percent (high risk), Region 2: 88 percent (critical risk), Region 3:87 percent (critical risk), and
Region IV-A: 83 percent (high risk).
“We need to be very cautious in interpreting this health care utilization rate. As what we’ve said, this [figure] is diluting because all the levels of hospitals are included here,” Vergeire said in an online media forum.
Vergeire said that the number of mild and asymptomatic Covid patients in NCR is at 41 percent.
“We have 1,062 asymptomatic and 1,792 mild suspects, probable, and confirmed cases,” she added.
Covid cases
As of 4 p.m. of April 21, the DOH logged 9,227 additional cases of Covid-19, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 962,307.
Through the “Oplan Recovery,” the DOH recorded 19,699 recoveries and 124 deaths.
Of the total number of cases, 12.1 percent (116,434) are active, 86.2 percent (829,608) have recovered, and 1.69 percent (16,265) perished.
Moreover, 36 cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The DOH said that one laboratory was not operational on April 19, while 8 labs were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.