With over a week before Christmas, the Philippines continues to experience a decline of COVID-19 cases with only 380 average daily cases from Dec. 8 to 14, lower by 26% from last week’s data.
The average is even higher than today’s cases at 235 or the lowest reported new case count since June last year.
The Department of Health (DOH) said the country and all its regions are under minimal risk classification after recording a negative two-week growth rate and average daily attack rate or incidence of 1 per 100,000 population.
Only Regions 5 and 12 were seen with slight increase of cases due to a positive growth rate last week.
The DOH warned that active cases may increase by the end of January if compliance to minimum public health standards decline by 30%.
DOH Epidemiology Bureau Dir. Alethea de Guzman noted that wearing masks should be observed at all times.
“Even we have elderly or those with comorbidity, I think very rare na may magsusuot ng mask, or ikalawa siguro ‘yung workplaces natin, wala na tayong face shield sa loob. Masking will really be that protection against infection or exposure,” she said.
Despite a decline in cases, the DOH reminds laboratories to continue sending samples for genome sequencing amid the threat posed by COVID-19 variant.
Initial findings show that an Omicron case can infect 10 individuals, which is slightly higher than the six to eight of the Delta variant. This is based on the spike of cases in South Africa due to Omicron.
“Sa South Africa po, they have about 23% of their population vaccinated. Dito po sa Pilipinas based on total population, we are at about 37% vaccinated at halos more than 50 million na po ang may first dose ng bakuna, at patuloy pa rin ho tayong nagra-ramp up ng ating pagbabakuna,” DOH USec. Maria Rosario Vergeire said.
“So with all of these interventions that we are doing, hopefully we do not have this kind of situation like South African countries right now,” she added. – Report from Mark Fetalco/AG-rir
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