The government is considering having vaccination cards expire in six months to push people into getting booster shots against COVID-19.
In a briefing Monday, Interior and Local Government Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said this was among the measures the government is considering to increase the number of people with booster shots.
As of March 30, 65,885,048 people were already fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but only 12,018,418 people have received a booster shot, and most of these are in Metro Manila.
Also, the Department of Health (DOH) said it is in constant coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding XE, a possible new coronavirus variant linked to the highly transmissible Omicron.
“Observation and monitoring are still ongoing on whether the variant would be categorized as a sub-variant of Omicron or a new variant to be named by WHO should it display any significant change in characteristics,” the DOH said.
Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año on Monday said he wants the entire country under Alert Level 1 to ease COVID-19 restrictions and improve the economy.
In a radio interview, Año said the government has lowered the requirements to place an area under Alert Level 1, easing the required vaccination rate of the A2 population from the previous 80 percent to the current 70 percent.
According to the WHO, the XE recombinant is a mutant of the BA.1 and the BA.2 sub-variants of Omicron.
The WHO said XE belongs to the Omicron variant until “significant differences in transmission and disease characteristics, including severity, may be reported.”
On the other hand, the DOH said it is also continuously monitoring case trends with the assistance of the Philippine Genome Center.
“In this light, the DOH reminds the public that vaccines, in addition to adhering to the minimum public health standards and now, more importantly, everyone, especially our elderly, the immunocompromised, those with comorbidities, and children are highly encouraged to get vaccinated and boosted,” the DOH said.
The Philippines logged an average of 382 daily fresh COVID-19 cases during the past seven days, the DOH said.
From March 28 to April 3, a total of 2,679 new coronavirus infections, which is 2 percent lower than the cases reported from the previous week, were confirmed, the DOH said.
Of the additional infections during the week, one patient was classified as severe or critical, the DOH said.
As of Sunday, 692 or 11.9 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients were in severe or critical condition.
The number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds occupied nationwide stood at 492, or 16.5 percent of the total 2,990, the DOH said in its latest bulletin.
During the past week, the DOH said it verified 329 COVID-related fatalities, citing late encoding of death information.
The total COVID-19 death toll as of Sunday, was at 59,343, or 1.6 percent of the country’s cumulative total coronavirus infections.
The private sector and the vaccine expert panel has urged the government to redefine the meaning of “full vaccination” to include booster shots to urge more people to get the additional dose.
The DOH said experts have yet to recommend it as it would cause confusion among the public.
The government’s COVID-19 vaccination program was rolled out on March 1, 2021, more than a year since the country started logging confirmed cases of the respiratory disease.
The Philippines, as of Sunday, has logged a total of 3,679,629 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which, 35,976 were active.