MANILA, Philippines -- As health officials in Central Luzon reported the country's first community-level transmission in a village in Jaen, Nueva Ecija, the Department of Health central office in Manila placed the national count of confirmed Influenza A(H1N1) virus cases at 147.

Chief epidemiologist Doctor Eric Tayag said on Sunday details on the demographics of the 36 new confirmed cases?there were 111 confirmed cases as of Saturday? were not yet available.

Tayag, director of the National Epidemiology Center, said other areas were being prepared for the mitigation phase in the event of a community-level transmission.

These include two barangay (villages) adjacent to Hilera village in Jaen, where the community-level outbreak has been declared. The two villages are being monitored because many of their children are pupils of the Hilera Elementary School.

?The spread of the virus is inevitable. That's the meaning of the WHO's pandemic six [alert],? Tayag said as he talked about the community outbreak declared in Hilera village.

Tayag was quoting World Health Organization (WHO) chief Margaret Chan's declaration of a level six pandemic last week alerting WHO-member countries of the increased confirmed cases in the coming weeks.

The mitigation phase means focusing on attending to the sick and ensuring their recovery. The containment mode involves emphasis on preventing the spread of the virus from one person to another.

?[Health Secretary Francisco Duque III] has said that when there is already community transmission and a pandemic six alert, mitigation is done. The focus would be on taking care of the sick rather than stopping the virus,? Tayag said in a phone interview.

?As long as there is no community level transmission, the response is containment. We have clusters that are being prepared for mitigation because they could have community level transmission soon,? Tayag added.

Duque on Saturday said the mitigation phase would not be done across the country and would only be observed in areas already found to have a community outbreak. Containment will still be observed in other areas.

?I want to make it clear that mitigation will be done in phases and that it will not be applied across the nation completely and instantaneously. This will depend on the presence of community-wide transmission and whether there is a high or low volume of cases in a community," he said.

?Therefore, in areas where there are few cases and we can still contain the spread of A (H1N1), mitigation strategies generally will not apply,? Duque said.

As of Friday, 32 of the confirmed cases had been sent home after having recovered from their ?mild? flu-like symptoms and after having been found negative of the A(H1N1) flu when tested anew.

Data on additional cases that had fully recovered and were no longer contagious were not immediately available on Sunday.

Tayag said the Hilera village in Jaen entered the mitigation phase of the government's response to the A(H1N1) flu virus while two adjacent villages were in containment mode. Some school children of the affected Hilera Elementary School came from the two nearby villages.

?There is a standby center in place so that when medicine is needed, such can be made available,? Tayag said quoting the report the DoH regional office in Central Luzon.

?They are also intensifying the information on how people can be treated at home and how to prevent the virus from spreading further,? he said.

Tayag said there might be no need to suspend classes as a result of the flu spread.

?It depends if there are too many who would absent themselves. If the virus is already in the community, it's already useless to suspend classes,? Tayag said.

Tayag considered a community outbreak in Metro Manila as unlikely because of its 12-million population. Confirmed cases were not clustered and came from different parts of the metropolis.

?In Hilera, there are much less people,? he said.

The DoH as early as last week outlined its plan for a shift to the mitigation response indicating that it expected community-level transmission as early as then.

Tayag said the DoH informed the public of the mitigation phase to avoid the abnormal response in other countries such as a high demand for A(H1N1) test kits and hospitalization.

Under the mitigation phase, Tayag said there would be less demand for flu tests.

The tests under the containment stage were being done to monitor the spread of the virus in an attempt to prevent its further transmission.

Under the mitigation phase, those who only need to be tested are those with pre-existing conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and pregnancy that might give rise to complications if they are infected with A(H1N1).

Persons who would demonstrate flu symptoms, Tayag said, should stay at home and manage their symptoms like fever, cough, colds and/or sore throat.