Cases decline as tests stay low, but hospitalizations still high

MANILA. In this photo taken in early September 2021, residents walk outside their homes near a lockdown area due to a Covid-19 case in Quezon City. (File)
MANILA. In this photo taken in early September 2021, residents walk outside their homes near a lockdown area due to a Covid-19 case in Quezon City. (File)

THE Department of Health (DOH) said the daily coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) case count has continued to decline, but also noted that testing output has decreased and some local government units (LGUs) have used the rapid antigen test in their case finding efforts.

Hospitalizations, on the other hand, have remained at a high-risk level, with intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy estimated 72 percent nationwide and 74 percent in the National Capital Region (NCR), based on the DOH October 3 case bulletin.

DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire on Monday, October 4, 2021, said the DOH was looking at several factors to determine whether there is really a downtrend or an artificial decline.

Vergeire said the seven-day average went down to 14,705 in the week from September 27 to October 3, from 17,765 in the previous week from September 20 to 26, and the new peak of 20,946 in the week from September 6 to 12.

Vergeire said cases were declining in the NCR and in the rest of Luzon as well as in Mindanao, while cases in the Visayas were at a plateau.

The DOH official case count, however, includes only the results of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests using nasopharyngeal specimen or saliva. The results of antigen tests, which merely determine whether an individual suffered from or is battling an infection which may not be Covid-19, are not included in the case count.

"We cannot be certain. We can't say yet that the trend is really going down because there are other factors affecting (the tally). We have decreased laboratory outputs and we would like to know why lab outputs are decreasing," Vergeire said in her regular press conference Monday.

Daily tests went down by 11.8 percent to a seven-day average of 69,055 in the recent week compared to the previous week from September 18 to 24.

Vergeire said the DOH has also started gathering data to verify suspicions that the case count is low because antigen tests were being used and the results are not included in the official tally.

"We have yet to complete our data to be able to see the trends. Aside from that, we still have to determine whether the number of people being tested is really decreasing," Vergeire said.

Testing hesitancy

In a previous press conference, Vergeire said they have observed that people were not getting themselves tested for the coronavirus for at least two reasons, based on discussions with experts and regional health officials.

One reason is that people are afraid of being extracted from their homes and being brought to a quarantine facility if they test positive for the virus.

"They fear that their families would have nothing to eat if they are forced into quarantine," Vergeire said.

Most of the quarantine facilities are public school classrooms. Many have complained that the toilets are either dirty or non-functional, there is no security and medical care is inadequate.

Another reason is the perception that cases are declining and Covid-19 is just similar to the ordinary colds and cough.

"These are the assumptions that we are working on right now. And we are going to have a rapid survey to check if our assumptions are true," she said.

As of October 3, six regions were still classified as high-risk due to positive two-week growth rate and high average daily attack rate. These are Cordillera, Cagayan Valley, Ilocos, Mimaropa, Zamboanga Peninsula and Bicol regions.

Five regions - Cordillera, Cagayan Valley, Zamboanga Peninsula, Bicol and Caraga - have high-risk beds and ICU occupancy while eight others have high-risk beds or ICU utilization.

The DOH has been having technical problems with the CovidKaya surveillance system, causing delays in the release of the daily case bulletin.

The data contained in the case bulletin comes from verified data and information retrieved from the CovidKaya. These were pushed from the Covid-19 Document Repository System (CDRS), which receives the testing data submitted by laboratories nationwide.

Whenever the CovidKaya server goes down due to its limited capacity, the DOH team manually retrieves the data from the CDRS. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)

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