SENATOR Imee Marcos, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s sister, has tested positive for Sars-CoV-2, which causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said on Monday, August 8, 2022.
Zubiri said the lawmaker is experiencing “raging fever” and is attending the plenary session virtually.
On Wednesday, August 3, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano was also not able to attend the plenary session after testing positive for coronavirus in an antigen test.
In its update, the Department of Health (DOH) said from August 1 to 7, 27,331 new Covid-19 cases were recorded, bringing the daily average cases to 3,904, 13 percent higher than the cases logged in on July 25 to July 31.
The country has a total of 37,805 active Covid-19 cases.
The DOH also said there were 76 new critical and severe cases during the August 1-7 period, bringing the total cases to 772.
It said the 772 severe and critical Covid-19 cases translate to a 9.3 percent of the total hospital admissions in the country.
It added that non-intensive care unit (ICU) utilization was at 30.9 percent, while ICU occupancy was at 24.8 percent.
In a televised press briefing, Philippine Genome Center director Cynthia Saloma said majority, or 85 percent of the samples that underwent genome sequencing tests were positive for Omicron BA.5 subvariant, which was reportedly more transmissible but less infectious.
The country has so far detected a total of 3,107 cases of BA.5.
Over the past week, the DOH also verified 80 more Covid-19 deaths in which eight occurred in August 2022 and another eight in August 2021; 24 in July 2022; five each in April 2021 and March 2022; seven in February 2022; four in January 2022; one each in October, May and March 2021; nine in September 2021; three each in July and May 2021; and two in June 2021.
Since 2020, the agency has recorded a total of 3,803,955 Covid-19 cases in the country with 60,807 deaths.
In terms of Covid-19 vaccination, the DOH said the country has inoculated 92.06 percent of the total target population.
The DOH said 71,898,721 individuals in the country have been fully vaccinated, while 16,603,097 received booster doses. (SunStar Philippines)