Facade of the UP – Philippine General Hospital (Image from the PGH website)
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine General Hospital (PGH) is seeing a “slight increase” in the number of admitted COVID-19 patients, its spokesperson said Thursday.
PGH spokesman Dr. Jonas del Rosario said the PGH only had about 30 COVID-19 patients as of December 25, but as of Wednesday, the referral hospital now has 65 patients.
“Over the course of five days, we saw a slight increase in the number of patients coming to the ER (emergency room) or consultation. Some of them have COVID and some had to be admitted. Some had to be sent off because they have mild symptoms,” he said in an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel’s Rundown.
“So I guess it’s fair to say that there is a slight increase in the number of admissions now. We are seeing an increasing trend,” he noted.
For Del Rosario, the increase in the number of cases is because of increased mobility due to the Christmas holiday season.
He said “it’s hard to say” that the uptick is due to the more transmissible Omicron variant.
“I think the reason why we are seeing a slight increase in the number of admissions is we’re probably seeing the effects of increased mobility. The two-week incubation period is probably realized now starting December when people started having parties, eating with families, increased travel, so now we are seeing a surge,” said del Rosario.
“It’s hard to say it’s due to the Omicron variant because so far we have not identified any local transmission. The ones that have been identified are all travelers from other countries,” he added.
The slight increase in the number of patients at the PGH comes after the country’s largest referral facility had no new COVID-19 admission for a few consecutive days in early December.
The Philippines is seeing an increase in new COVID-19 cases and positivity rate. On Wednesday, the DOH logged 889 new coronavirus infections and a positivity rate of 4.5 percent, higher than the less than one positivity rate in the previous weeks.