PH Covid-19 case trend shows signs of decline: DOH

MANILA – The case trend of Covid-19 infections in the country shows signs of decline after noting a drop in daily reported cases for the past week, a health official reported Wednesday.

During an online media forum, DOH Epidemiology OIC-Director Alethea de Guzman said the average daily reported cases for the period June 16 to 22 decreased to 5,790 compared to that of June 9 to 15 at 6,678.

“Although these numbers are going down, it’s still far from our pre-spike levels of less than 2,000 cases per day nationally,” she added.

The country’s average daily reported cases peaked from April 9 to 15 at 10,845 infections, overwhelming hospitals and other healthcare facilities at the time.

De Guzman said the National Capital Region Plus areas that include the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal, continue to show a decline in cases but the downtrend is slowing down.

She noted that there is a “larger decline” in the average daily reported cases in the region at an average of 685 from June 16 to 22 compared to 825 cases from June 9 to 15.

“The goal now is to push it down even further so that we reach our pre-ECQ levels of less than 500, in fact, in January to February, there are 300 cases per day only,” she said.

The NCR Plus areas, she added, show a slow downward trend in cases, with the exception of Laguna which is displaying a plateau.

For June 22, the top five regions with the most number of new cases are Region 4-A (Calabarzon) with 684 infections; Region 8, 447; NCR, 403; Region 6, 316; and Region 12, 297.

Meantime, the five top areas with the most number of new cases are Laguna with 275 infections; Cavite, 256; Bohol, 159; Isabela, 116; Southern Leyte,113; and South Cotabato, 113.

“We are now classifying four areas as high risk in terms of their case data and trend and these are Caraga, Regions 6, 11 and 12. All of them exhibited increase in reported cases in the past two weeks and their ADAR (average daily attack rate) already reached high risk,” de Guzman said.

Currently, five regions are classified as moderate risk – Regions 2, 8, 7, 1 and 5.

The NCR is now classified as low risk because it showed a 22 percent decrease in cases in the past two weeks and its ADAR is down to 5.7.

“At the moment, we don’t have any region which reached ‘high’ or ‘critical’ risk for their health care utilization but there are certain regions with ICU utilization rates at ‘high’ or ‘critical’ risk and these include Regions 6, 11, 12, 2 and 10,” de Guzman said.

There are 33 priority areas which the DOH flagged due to increase in cases and high to critical risk healthcare utilization rate and intensive care unit utilization rate.

They are La Union, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya, Bataan, Albay, Sorsogon, Naga City, Iloilo City, Capiz, Guimaras, Bacolod City, Antique, Negros Oriental, Ormoc City, Tacloban City, Zamboanga del Norte, Cagayan de Oro City, Bukidnon, Davao de Oro, Davao City, Davao del Norte, South Cotabato, General Santos City, Lucena City, Quezon, Puerto Princesa City, Occidental Mindoro, Cotabato City, Butuan City, Surigao del Sur, and Surigao del Norte.

The nation’s mortality data has improved with only 56 deaths per day logged from June 1 to 22 which is lower than the 121 deaths recorded in April and 107 deaths in May.

“Our mortality curve is not as rapid a decline as result for our case data but it is showing the continuous decrease of cases in NCR and Region 3 but the deaths are plateauing at Calabarzon and the deaths are really coming from regions outside these three major areas,” de Guzman said.

As for the cases with variants of concern (VOC), 14 regions have local cases positive for Alpha variant and 15 regions positive for Beta, most of them are in the NCR, she added.

About 13 percent of these cases with the Alpha and Beta variants were incoming international travelers.

“Sa ngayon, wala tayo nakikita pa na kaso locally na may Gamma o Delta variant pero ang ating pagpapaala sa ating mga LGU napakahalaga kung nakakita na tayo ng pagtaas ng kaso (Currently, we haven’t seen local cases with Gamma or Delta variant but we remind our LGUs that if there’s an increase in cases) we need to respond quickly, we shouldn’t be waiting for our genome sequencing result. We respond as if we’re treating there’s already VOC in our area,” she said.