The government may move away from regional or province-wide lockdowns in favor of granular lockdowns limited to subdivisions, streets, or several houses, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said Thursday.
DILG Undersecretary Epimaco Densing said in a televised briefing that the shift was based on the recommendation of a sub-technical working group led by the Department of Health (DOH).
Under a granular lockdown, even authorized persons are barred from leaving their homes, which will lessen public mobility and the chances of COVID-19 spreading, Densing said.
The national government will help local authorities provide food assistance in areas under granular lockdowns, he added.
“There will be a policy shift because we know this way is more effective,” he said in Filipino.
Densing said the national government would still have the option to declare a wide lockdown, but this would be a last resort.
Palace spokesman Harry Roque said the shift was “approved as a principle” and said the government had been moving in this direction.
The Philippines on Thursday logged 16,313 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections to 1,899,200.
The tally was the highest since April 19. It is also the 16th straight day that new cases topped 10,000.
There were 236 new fatalities on Thursday, bringing the COVID-19 death toll to 32,728.
The DOH also reported 9,659 persons who recovered recently, bringing the total recoveries to 1,734,551.
There were 131,921 or 6.9 percent active cases, of which 96.1 were mild, 1.1 percent were asymptomatic, 0.6 percent were critical, 1.2 percent were severe, and 1.03 percent were moderate.
The positivity rate is at 24.9 percent, based on test results of samples from 65,903 individuals last Tuesday.
Nationwide, 75 percent of the ICU beds, 63 percent of the isolation beds, 69 percent of the ward beds, and 54 percent of the ventilators, were in use.
In Metro Manila, 77 percent of the ICU beds, 61 percent of the isolation beds, 71 percent of the ward beds, and 58 percent of the ventilators, were in use.
The DOH warned the new cases would continue to break records in the coming weeks.
DOH Epidemiology Bureau director Dr. Alethea De Guzman said the increase in cases earlier this year started in late February to early March, but only peaked in the first week of April.
“In the next few days and weeks, we’ll probably [be] seeing additional peaks,” she said in an online forum.
De Guzman said the increase in cases is no longer coming from just NCR Plus or Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.
“It’s actually more challenging now because the increase in cases is not centered on that area alone. It’s actually across [the] whole of Luzon and selected regions in Visayas and Mindanao,” she said.
The DOH had said it would take around two to three weeks after the lifting of the ECQ for the effects of the lockdown to become evident.
Metro Manila was under an ECQ only until Aug. 20 and was placed under a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), along with Laguna and Bataan until the end of the month.
De Guzman admitted it is difficult to predict exactly when cases would peak again since the numbers change weekly.
The Philippines logged a record-high 18,332 new COVID-19 cases on Aug. 23, the latest in a string of all-time highs registered this month alone.
The Philippines averaged 15,537 new cases daily from Aug. 19 to 25, higher than its average of 12,897 new infections in the week before.
The more virulent Delta variant of COVID-19 has been found in all regions of the country, except for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
This does not mean that the variant is not present in the Bangsamoro, De Guzman said, saying this could be because they received only a small number of samples from the region so far.
The Delta variant—which is known to be more contagious than the original COVID-19 strain—accounts for about 11 percent of all sequenced samples in the Philippines, she said.
The DOH earlier confirmed that there is already community transmission of the Delta variant in the NCR and in Calabarzon, but it would be difficult to declare a community transmission nationwide, De Guzman said.
De Guzman said they had no evidence yet if the Delta variant was causing a more severe disease.
The DOH has begun shifting from purposive sampling to representative sampling to get a better picture of which variants are dominant in certain areas in the Philippines, she said.
“The sampling methodology we employ is very biased towards determining variants of concern,” she said.
“Now that we have more available kits… We have started doing representative sampling, meaning we do not only focus on places with a high number of cases,” she said.
All variants of concern in the country account for 59 percent of 10,412 samples sequenced, data from the DOH showed.
As of Aug. 21, the Philippines has detected 2,322 Alpha variant cases, 2,588 Beta variant patients, and 1,273 Delta variant samples.
The DOH said Metro Manila and nine other regions are now classified as “high risk” for COVID-19 due to rising cases.
The DOH announcement came more than two weeks after the agency declared that the entire country was in the same risk classification as the national two-week growth rate then increased to 47 percent, with an average daily attack rate of 7.20 cases per 100,000 population.
On Aug. 13, the DOH said that all areas in the NCR were classified as either at “high” or “critical” risk for COVID-19.
De Guzman said the current COVID-19 risk classification for all 17 localities in Metro Manila stems from the high bed utilization rates or nearly full intensive care units.