(UPDATED) The Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday, July 22, 2021, announced that 12 more Delta cases and over 300 cases with other variants have been detected in the country.
All the 12 additional Delta cases are local. Six have addresses in Central Luzon, two are in Calabarzon, one in Bicol and three from the National Capital Region (NCR).
All have been tagged as recovered, but regional and local DOH offices were validating their status.
In its statement, the DOH said government response to the Delta variant cases is premised on the possibility that local transmission is ongoing.
“With the detection of additional cases, it is crucial that we implement enhanced response immediately in the areas where these cases were detected and its contiguous LGUs (local government units) as well as areas with case spikes with the premise that there may be ongoing local transmission already,” the agency said.
The additional cases brought the total number of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases with the Delta variant in the country to 47, with three deaths and eight active cases. Of the 47 cases, 23 are local cases while 24 are returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs).
Aside from the Delta variant cases, the University of the Philippines Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC) also detected 187 additional cases with the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7), 142 Beta variant (B.1.351) cases and 12 P.3 (Theta) variant cases.
Alpha, Beta and Delta are variants of concern, while P.3, which emerged in Central Visayas, is a variant under alerts for further monitoring.
There are now 1,668 Alpha cases in the country, 1,827 Beta cases, 47 Delta cases, 2 Gamma (P.1) cases and 233 P.3 cases.
To date, the UP-PGC has sequenced a total of 8,930 samples, which constitute only 0.58 percent of the 1,524,449 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country as of July 21.
Of the additional 187 Alpha variant cases, 179 were local cases. The DOH said it was still verifying whether the eight others are ROFs or local cases.
Fifty-four of these additional cases had died while 133 have been tagged as recovered. A total of 107 patients had died due to the Alpha variant in the Philippines.
For the Beta variant cases, 134 were local while eight were being verified. Twenty-one patients had died, raising the death toll due to this variant to 69, and 121 have recovered.
All the 12 additional P.3 cases, which included 11 local cases and one under verification, have recovered. The P.3 was reclassified by the World Health Organization to variants with alerts for further monitoring from variant of interest as investigation on its public health implication is still ongoing.
Among these variants, Delta is the most transmissible, causing steep increases in new infections and hospital admissions in over 90 countries. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)