DOH sees ‘plateau’ in virus cases

The Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday said it was seeing a “plateau” in coronavirus infections after an increase brought about by gatherings during the Christmas and New Year holidays.

But the public should remain vigilant, especially as there are moves to reopen the economy wider, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.

“We want to reiterate that as we continue to reopen industries to boost the economy and provide livelihood for [the people], we must also shift our strategies from risk aversion to risk management,” Vergeire said.

Improvement

She said the DOH was seeing a plateau in the number of coronavirus infections, with active cases falling to just 5 percent of more than 550,000 cases as of Feb. 15.

“The active case rate is an improvement from the 8-9 percent active cases reported previously. The country’s recovery rate is also at 92.0 percent, which is a good indicator in the country’s management of COVID-19 cases,” Vergeire said.

“If we want to retain these trends and see our economy fully reopen, we should all carry out our individual responsibilities to maintain caution and practice our minimum public health standards,” she added.

Not all regions were doing well, though, Vergeire said. The DOH, she said, is closely monitoring three regions where there has been increases in new cases—Central Visayas, especially Cebu City, Soccsksargen, and Caraga, except Agusan del Sur province.

“[We are also] seeing a slight increase of 4 percent growth in cases in [Northern Mindanao] these past two weeks,” Vergeire said.

On Thursday, the DOH recorded 1,744 additional coronavirus infections, bringing the overall number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country to 555,163.

96 more die

The department said 96 more patients had died, raising the death toll from the severe respiratory disease to 11,673.

But 412 other patients had recovered, pushing the total number of COVID-19 survivors in the country to 512,375.

The deaths and recoveries left the country with 31,115 active cases, of which 85.6 percent were mild, 8.6 percent asymptomatic, 0.78 percent moderate, 2.5 percent severe, and 2.5 percent critical.