About half of the people who were hospitalized for COVID-19 have experienced the disease’s long haul effects, a government adviser said on Tuesday.
National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 medical adviser Dr. Ted Herbosa, in an ANC interview, said that people who develop long COVID continue to have inflammation in the brain, heart, or lungs despite having recovered from COVID-19.
“What we’ve discovered is that it’s actually very high among the hospitalized. If you are hospitalized for COVID, ICU, as high as 50 percent continue to experience what we now term as long haul COVID or long COVID,” Herbosa said.
Herbosa, however, said that someone who has recovered from the viral disease is no longer infectious even if he or she still exhibits symptoms.
Some of long COVID’s symptoms include “brain fog” or the inability to think well, and fatigue, especially among athletes.
If people suffer these symptoms, Herbosa said they should continue their consultation with their physicians.
Now that the National Capital Region (NCR) and several other areas are under Alert Level 1, Herbosa said there should be a paradigm shift from the government telling people what to do to people regulating themselves to help limit the spread of COVID-19 infections.
The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) approved placing the NCR and 38 more areas under a COVID-19 Alert Level 1 from March 1 to March 15.
Aside from this de-escalation to the “new normal,” Herbosa said March 1 marks the first anniversary of the country’s COVID-19 vaccination drive.
“We started one year ago, March 1, 2021, the first day of people being vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine. Today, we have vaccinated 63 million Filipinos, fully vaccinated, and 10 million with boosters. We got here because of these very good efforts to vaccinate the people,” he said.
The Philippines logged 1,067 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, bringing the total case count to 3,663,059, the Department of Health (DOH) reported.
The positivity rate was at 4.3 percent based on 18,766 people tested for COVID-19 on Feb. 27, the lowest so far this year.
The DOH said the relatively lower numbers were the result of lower laboratory output on Sundays.
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were National Capital Region (Metro Manila) with 144 or 22 percent, Region 4-A (CALABARZON) with 92 or 14 percent, and Region 3 (Central Luzon) with 72 or 11 percent.
No new deaths were reported, while there were 1,652 new recoveries, bringing the total number of recoveries to 3,555,016.
There were 51,592 active cases, of which 489 were asymptomatic; 46,609 were mild; 2,779 were moderate; 1,417 were severe; and 298 were critical.
Nationwide, 26 percent of ICU beds, 22 percent of isolation beds, 15 percent of ward beds, and 13 percent of ventilators, are in use.
In Metro Manila, 26 percent of ICU beds, 23 percent of isolation beds, 24 percent of ward beds, and 16 percent of ventilators, are in use.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said there has been no increase in COVID-19 infections in the country since the campaign period for national candidates and party-list groups started in early February.
All areas nationwide are classified under minimal to low risk for COVID-19, except for two others that have moderate intensive care unit (ICU) utilization rate, Vergeire said.
The campaign period for candidates running for national positions officially started on Feb. 8, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Also on Tuesday, the DOH said it would “permanently” shift from issuing daily COVID-19 case bulletins to weekly reports, focusing on active severe and critical infections and intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy.
“Starting March 7, that’s a Monday next week, we will be issuing a revised case bulletin,” Vergeire said.
Vergeire said the public COVID-19 tracker will be updated daily for now, but it will also be released once a week soon along with the case bulletin.
Vergeire said the purpose for these changes is to make the public look beyond the number of infections, and instead focus on the symptoms and health care utilization in the country.