COVID-19 cases down for first time since June

COVID-19 frontliners in a Metro Manila hospital. (FILE PHOTO)

MANILA, Philippines — Daily COVID-19 cases dropped for the first time since figures started going up in June although the number of deaths climbed to its highest since May, the Department of Health (DOH) reported on Monday.

Over the past week, it recorded 3,412 daily new infections, 15 percent lower than the previous week’s 4,001 cases.

Of the 23,883 confirmed COVID-19 cases last week, 101 were in severe or critical condition.

The downward trend in daily cases was also observed in the National Capital Region, which accounted for about a third of total detected cases.

However, the DOH confirmed that 321 more people died of COVID-19, 90 of them in the past three weeks. This was a big increase over the 229 deaths reported in the previous week, the highest weekly death toll in four months.

Of the 321 deaths, 109 occurred in August, 90 in July and 20 in June while the rest were reported between January 2021 to June this year.

This brought the official COVID-19 death toll to 61,357 out of 3.85 million confirmed cases.

Active cases, on the other hand, were at 35,271, of which 811 were in severe or critical condition.

The DOH also reported a slight improvement in hospital bed occupancy with 27 percent of COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) beds in use, compared to 28 percent last week.

As for non-ICU beds, 30.2 percent were occupied, lower than last week’s 30.9 percent.

The DOH, meanwhile, did not confirm or deny a report about a fourth monkeypox case in Iloilo.

“In the interest of public health, patient privacy and compliance with the law, the DOH reminds all concerned that data collection, analysis and the dissemination of information … can only be done by authorized personnel from the DOH and its local counterparts,” it said in a statement.

It has so far confirmed three monkeypox cases in the country, all of whom have either recovered or remain in isolation, while their close contacts have been ordered to go on quarantine.

All three cases traveled recently to countries with confirmed cases.

An infectious diseases expert said that it was not certain whether the infectious disease would become endemic in the country.

“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion. We will probably see more cases over time, but as long as we do our job and continue to monitor it, there is no certainty that this will become endemic to the Philippines,” Dr. Edsel Salvana, a member of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ technical working group, said at a Laging Handa public briefing.

He said that they were in coordination with the DOH and various medical societies.

—WITH A REPORT FROM JULIE M. AURELIO 

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