MANILA, Philippines — The number of COVID-19 cases in the country has begun to plateau, said Department of Health (DOH) officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire on Wednesday, but warned the public not to be “complacent.”
In a televised interview with Teleradyo, Vergeire said that the recent low number of COVID-19 cases may just be due to the number of tests conducted by laboratories nationwide.
“Sa ngayon po nakikita natin medyo nag-plateau ang numbers natin, katulad nang aming sinasabi in the past days, let us not be complacent baka po kasi apektado lang ng numbers of samples tested for laboratories itong numero natin,” Vergeire said.
(Right now we see that our numbers have plateaued a bit, but like what we said in the past days, let us not be complacent maybe because this number may only affected by the numbers of samples tested for laboratories.)
“Tignan po natin in the coming days kung magtutuloy ang pagbaba ng mga kaso natin (Let’s see in the coming days if our cases continue to decrease),” she added.
On Tuesday, August 16, the DOH recorded 2,633 fresh COVID-19 infections, one of the lowest numbers in weeks — much lower than the daily average infections recorded during the previous week, August 8 to 14, at 4,001.
However, it should be noted that this reflected the 16,131 tests that were conducted on Sunday, which is significantly less than the over 20,000 that are typically conducted.
Meanwhile, independent pandemic monitor Octa research earlier also noted that the region of Metro Manila is currently experiencing a downward trend in its COVID-19 positivity rate, but reminded the public that the “wave is not over.”
Before all these, COVID-19 infections have steadily increased over the past few months due to the more infectious subvariants of Omicron COVID-19.
On the latest genome sequencing run, the DOH said that it has recorded 1,011 more cases of the BA.5 Omicron subvariant, said to be more transmissible than its counterparts.
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