DOH: ‘Wall of immunity’ vs COVID-19 waning, cases may peak by end-July

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MANILA, Philippines  — “The wall of immunity is really going down,” according to the Department of Health (DOH), stressing the need to get boosted as it sees COVID-19 cases may peak by end of July while hospitalization may rise by end of August.

“Based on the projections, it would be as low as 1,800 cases nationally to as high as 11,000 cases nationally,” DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Tuesday during a CNN Philippines interview.

She stressed that even if these are just projections, “[t]here are a lot of things that can contribute to us not reaching this or us really reaching that as early as the third week of July.”

“What we are trying to flag to the public would be if we do not update our boosters, the wall of immunity is really going down,” Vergeire pointed out. “We are going to see, based on our projections, an increase [in hospitalization] towards the end of August and the start of September.”

The DOH reported Monday that 71,055,752 people in the country have already completed their primary vaccination against the coronavirus. But only 15,342,652 of them took a booster dose.

Also on Monday, the DOH’s data showed 1,660 new infections – higher than the daily average of 1,467 new coronavirus cases from July 4-10. It also showed that the country has 14,218 active cases to date.

Since the pandemic hit the Philippines in 2020, the DOH has confirmed 3,720,054 cases of COVID-19. This total includes 3,645,196 recoveries and 60,640 deaths as of July 12.

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