New COVID-19 daily cases stay below 200

A test tube labelled “COVID-19 Test Positive” and a vial labelled “VACCINE Coronavirus COVID-19” are seen in this illustration. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

The country’s new COVID-19 caseload stayed below 200 for three straight days, according to the latest data from the Department of Health’s (DOH) daily tracker. Fresh cases on Wednesday were pegged at 167, slightly pushing the active cases to 10,109. The number also brought the total COVID-19 tally since 2020 to 4,072,261. Total recoveries in the country stood at 3,996,422, while those who died from the disease reached 65,730. The DOH had said that COVID-19 cases remained “manageable,” with only a few exceptions becoming severe and critical. But its officer in charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said there is no room for complacency as the virus is still in circulation. The same was raised by World Health Organization Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus over the “concerning” rate of fatalities due to COVID-19 in some countries. Based on the updated biosurveillance report of the DOH from Jan. 10 to Jan. 16, about 40 percent of the samples sequenced for this period were tagged as Omicron BA.2.3.20, while 16.7 percent were of the XBB subvariant. Others were classified as BA.5 (8 percent), BA.2.75 (2 percent), other “Omicron sublineages” (25 percent), while the rest still had no assigned lineage. —KATHLEEN DE VILLA