DOH: COVID-19 cases plateauing

FILE PHOTO: Test tubes labelled “COVID-19 Omicron variant test positive” are seen in this illustration picture. REUTERS

COVID-19 cases nationwide are plateauing as the number of new cases daily stayed at the 1,000 mark for the seventh straight day on Wednesday, although new infections are going up in some areas.

Health-care utilization rates as well as severe and critical cases, on the other hand, remained at low risk, according to Director Razel Nikka Hao of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Disease Prevention and Control Bureau.

She said that continued transmission of the virus was expected due to increased mobility and loosened restrictions.

“This is going to be how it is. There will be continued [emergence of] new variants, but there will be continued protection [by] the vaccines,” Hao said during a roundtable discussion.

Based on the DOH’s COVID-19 tracker, 1,476 new cases were reported on Wednesday, slightly up from the 1,165 recorded the day before. The latest number brought active cases to 12,706 and the country’s total COVID-19 tally to 4,106,974.

In Metro Manila, the weekly positivity rate stood at 24.2 percent as of Tuesday, up from 19.7 percent in the previous week.

“Exceeding 25 percent is almost a given at this time. We still expect the peak to happen within one to two weeks,” OCTA Research fellow Guido David said in a Twitter post.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a positivity rate of below 5 percent to signify that the spread of the virus is under control. The positivity rate is the number of confirmed infected individuals out of the total number of those who underwent reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction testing.

In a previous briefing, DOH officer in charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said that COVID-19 was still around and it was normal “that we expect an increase or a decrease in cases in our communities” even after WHO’s declaration that the virus was no longer a global public health emergency.

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