Updated @ 11:50 p.m., Jan. 10, 2022
MANILA, Philippines — The highly contagious Omicron variant has replaced the Delta variant as the dominant variant of the COVID-19 virus in the Philippines, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said in the taped weekly briefing with President Rodrigo Duterte that aired late Monday night.
This is based on the latest genomic sequencing run on Jan. 3.
“Based on our last run of genome sequencing, 60% of the samples sequenced were found positive for Omicron variant,” Duque said in Filipino.
“So it’s already the dominant variant — whereas before it was the Delta,” he added.
In the genome sequencing where 48 samples were taken, 60.42% or 29 cases were Omicron cases while 18 were Delta cases.
On Jan. 6, the Department of Health detected a total of 43 cases of Omicron variant in the country.
READ: DOH confirms 29 more cases of COVID-19 Omicron variant