LOCAL LOCKDOWN Village guards in Barangay Baclaran, Parañaque City, install an accordion-type barrier on Tuesday on a street that leads to a bridge which connects their city to Pasay City, where the more transmissible South Africa variant of the COVID-19 virus has been detected. The variant has also been detected in Parañaque, forcing the local lockdown. —MARIANNE BERMUDEZ
MANILA, Philippines — The increase in COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, particularly in Metro Manila, cannot be considered a second wave of coronavirus infections, as the country has yet to slow down the first wave, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.
“I wouldn’t classify this as a second wave because if you’re talking of a second wave, we should have seen a complete flattening of the curve. And in the case of [Metro Manila], we didn’t see that kind of flattening,” Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the WHO representative to the Philippines, told a news briefing at the Department of Health.
“Flattening the curve” is a community strategy to slow down the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 so as to keep infections at manageable levels.
While “the numbers went down at some stage” — 300 to 400 new infections daily — those still reflect “significant levels of transmission in the country,” Abeyasinghe said.
Significantly lower
He said he would rather call the current increase in infections a “spike.”
“There’s actually no value in classifying it as a second wave,” Abeyasinghe said.
But while more than 3,000 new infections daily are high, the figure is still significantly lower than the average of more than 6,000 daily at the height of the epidemic in the country last year, he said.
On Tuesday, the DOH reported 2,668 additional coronavirus infections, bringing the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country to 600,428 overall.
The DOH said seven more patients had died, raising the death toll to 12,528. It said 171 other patients had recovered, pushing the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 546,078.
That left the country with 41,822 active cases, of which 91.6 percent were mild, 3.9 percent asymptomatic, 0.80 percent moderate, 1.9 percent severe, and 1.8 percent critical.
Abeyasinghe said part of the spike in cases in Metro Manila may be attributed to variants of the COVID-19 coronavirus, but added: “[W]e believe that it’s not entirely being driven by the new variants because the number of cases detected and confirmed as opposed to the number of samples checked is limited.”
The number of known variants is simply too small to conclude that these variants are driving up cases, Abeyasinghe said.
The UK and South Africa variants of SARS-CoV-2 are more transmissible, and studies indicate that some vaccines may not be effective against the South Africa variant.
Household clustering
Abeyasinghe said reports from countries with variant cases showed the variants caused higher viral load in the respiratory tract of infected people, making the variants more transmissible.
“This may be what we are seeing here in Manila, where we are getting reports from city health divisions, units in Pasay City and other cities affected. That where the new variants have been confirmed, they’re seeing not individual cases in households but practically everybody in the household being infected,” Abeyasinghe said.
He said the WHO was working with local officials to contain infections and avoid going into another blanket lockdown.
Abeyasinghe reminded Filipinos to comply with the minimum public health measures such as wearing masks and face shields and observing physical distancing.
President Rodrigo Duterte blamed the flare-up on the abandonment of the health measures by quarantine-weary people and on the many gatherings during the last holiday season.
“We are seeing the result now,” Duterte said in a televised briefing on Monday night.
The president appealed to the public to strictly comply with the health rules and trust the advice of government officials, especially Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.
Duterte said the government was looking for ways to combat the variants, and asked the people to cooperate.
“We hope you can help the country. Follow [the health measures] and we could maybe lower the COVID-19 cases,” the president said.
Growth rate rise
Duque reported at the briefing that the two-week growth rate in infections had increased in Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon and Central Visayas.
In Metro Manila, he said, the cities of Pasay and Malabon are at critical risk, while Navotas, Makati and San Juan are at high risk.
Duque said health authorities were making sure that hospitals had the capacity to handle COVID-19 cases.
He stressed the need to strictly comply with the minimum health measures to prevent further spread of the virus.
According to the OCTA group of researchers from the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas, the number of COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila has already exceeded its projection and unless the viral spread is abated, it could become double the number of infections recorded at the peak of the epidemic last year.
OCTA said on Tuesday that actual numbers started to surpass its projection late last week as the daily average hit 1,600 in Metro Manila.
It said the reproduction rate, or how fast the infection spreads, also increased to 1.8 percent from 1.6 percent in February.
“That’s why we are sounding the alarm. It’s very urgent [and] we do not want this trend to continue. Even if we say there is low mortality rate, it could still overwhelm the health-care [system],” OCTA fellow Guido David said.
5,000 cases by end-March
On Feb. 17, OCTA projected that COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila could reach 2,400 daily by March 26. If the current trend continues, David said, daily cases in the metropolis can hit 4,000 to 5,000 by the end of March.
Guido said OCTA supported the imposition of local lockdowns in areas with increasing numbers of infection.
The group also recommends enforcing curfew anew and temporarily limiting workforces and cutting restaurant capacity to 30 percent to reduce people’s mobility.
Also on Tuesday, the Association of Philippine Medical Colleges Inc. suspended in-person internship rotation at all hospitals in Metro Manila due to the spike in COVID-19 cases.
In an advisory dated March 7, Manuel Dayrit, the association president, said all learning activities could instead be continued virtually, and advised all who were eligible to get vaccinated.
In areas outside Metro Manila with increasing infections, Dayrit said hospital directors may decide to suspend in-person rotation according to guidelines or announcements from the national government.