THE Department of Health (DOH) noted on Friday, August 12, 2022, the continuous increase in coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in most areas of the country but remains at low risk case classification.
In a press conference, DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said the plus areas, which includes Bulacan, Laguna, Rizal, Batangas and Cavite, as well as Mindanao showed a slight uptick in cases.
She said the rest of Luzon and areas in the Visayas region showed signs of plateauing.
In the National Capital Region (NCR), Vergeire said cases are on a slight downward trend with almost 1,300 daily cases over the past seven days.
From August 5 to 11, the DOH recorded 28,178 new Covid-19 cases in the country, bringing the average daily case to 4,025. This was nine-percent higher than the week prior and similar to the level during the second week of February 2022 when the Philippines experienced a surge due to the Omicron variant.
Despite the increase in cases, Vergeire said the country remained at low risk case classification with a national Average Daily Attack Rate (Adar) of 3.51 cases per 100,000.
She said under moderate risk case classification were NCR and the Cordillera region with an Adar of 9.17 and 7.96 cases per 100,000, respectively.
The other regions were under low risk case classification with Adar ranging from one to three per 100,000.
The Cagayan and Calabarzon regions were nearing their Adar threshold with 4.52 and 5.09 per 100,000, respectively.
Vergeire said the national positivity rate, or the number of people testing positive for the virus after getting tested, increased from 18 percent to 18.5 percent over the past week.
However, Vergeire said the national healthcare utilization was still at low risk or below 50 percent. The intensive care unit occupancy was at 28 percent.
As of August 10, she said there were 871 severe and critical admissions.
Currently, the country has over 37,000 active Covid-19 cases.
Vergeire said 14.9 percent of the total admissions were asymptomatic while 40.77 percent were mild cases.
She said among the regions, the Bangsamoro is already at high risk health utilization rate while Western Visayas and Davao Region were at more than 40 percent.
As of August 11, there were more than 72 million fully vaccinated individuals in the country, in which 6.8 million were senior citizens.
Vergeire said 9.8 million adolescents and 4.3 million children ages five to 11 were already fully vaccinated ahead of the resumption of in-person classes.
She said 16.8 million received their first booster dose while 1.7 million with their second.
Subvariants
The DOH has detected 255 more cases of the highly contagious omicron subvariants, in which 190 were BA.5 34 were BA.4 and one was BA.2.12.1.
Of the newly detected BA.5 cases, a total of 175 have recovered, seven were undergoing isolation, and the status of the remaining eight patients was being verified.
The DOH said 33 of the new BA.4 cases as well as the lone BA.2.12.1 case have already been tagged as recovered. (SunStar Philippines)