THE Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday, December 6, 2021, that the country remains under minimal risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the Covid-19 situation in the country continues to improve, citing the drop of national two-week growth rate and average daily attack rate.
She said only Metro Manila, Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan Valley and Zamboanga Peninsula remain under low risk classification.
The Philippines recorded a negative two-week growth rate of -57 percent and a low-risk average daily attack rate of .67 per 100,000 individuals from November 22 to December 5.
Vergeire said the average daily cases in the country decreased by 397 cases or 42 percent this week to an average of 544 cases per day over the past seven days.
“These average cases per day is already nine times lower than those reported in July of 2021 at 4,982 and also lower than 1,130 cases per day observed from December 27, 2020, from January 2 of 2021,” she said.
“Looking at the epidemic curve of our major island groups and the NCR (National Capital Region) plus areas, majority of areas have been on a plateau since the start of November while the rest of Luzon showed signs of plateauing in the case trend in the recent week,” she added.
The country’s positivity rate, which refers to the percentage of people testing positive for the virus, is low at 1.80 percent.
Vergeire said Metro Manila has the lowest positivity rate among all regions at 1.1 percent.
She said the national health systems capacity was also at low risk.
As of December 5, 25.89 percent of intensive care units (ICU), 25.36 percent of isolation beds and 14.43 hospital wards for Covid-19 were occupied.
Vergeire said ICU admissions dropped by 26 percent, which indicates fewer severe Covid-19 cases.
“At the national level, the percentage of critical cases had remained almost the same since mid-October. Followed by a slow decline starting November,” she said.
“For the severe case, we saw its percentage among admissions continuously decline since the end of October,” she added.
As of December 5, there were 13,853 active Covid-19 cases in the country, of which 49.1 were mild and asymptomatic cases.
The Philippines has so far recorded a total of 2,834,775 Covid-19 cases with 49,386 deaths.
Among the admissions, Vergeire said 18 percent were severe and eight percent were critical as of December 4. (SunStar Philippines)