Metro Manila is now back to being a “moderate risk” for COVID-19 infection after the National Capital Region’s (NCR) positivity rate rose to 16.4 percent, the Department of Health (DOH) said Friday.
In a briefing, DOH officer-in-charge Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said hospital admissions remain manageable, despite the increase in the positivity rate, which is the percentage of people who test positive in relation to the total number of tests.
Vergeire also said that while the World Health Organization sees an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DOH believes the coronavirus is here to stay.
Eleven out of 17 cities and the lone municipality in Metro Manila are classified under moderate risk, she said.
Moderate risk means an area had a positive two-week growth rate in the number of COVID-19 cases and an average daily attack rate of between 1 to 7. ADAR is the number of new cases over a two-week period, divided by the population.
Vergeire noted that the health systems capacity in Metro Manila is still at a “low risk” case classification.
“Their hospital utilization is just at less than 40 percent. For the wards, it’s 39 percent and for ICU it’s just 33 percent,” she said.
Six out of 17 areas in the capital region saw an increase in hospital admissions for COVID-19, Vergeire said.
Only Pasig and Muntinlupa reported higher ICU admissions due to the disease, she added.
Vergeire said the rise in coronavirus infections could not yet be attributed to the relaxing of mask-wearing in outdoor settings, as the effects of that policy would not be apparent until one or two weeks.
“What we can say is that mobility has increased after face-to-face classes started,” she said.
But she also noted that other regions that had begun in-person classes did not show an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
Health experts have raised concerns that a new policy that makes face masks optional in outdoor settings would lead to an increase in infections.
Reacting to the WHO statement that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic is in sight, Vergeire said the DOH sees the same thing in the Philippines—but cautioned that the coronavirus is here to stay.
“It will still cause outbreaks every now and then. Expectedly, it will still cause one to two deaths or some deaths every now and then because COVID-19 will not disappear,” she said.
“What we need to do, strengthen our system, strengthen the immunity of the population, make our facilities ready so that if we reach that point, we are prepared, we are not worried, we are protected,” she added.
Citing the WHO, she said the country must continue testing, maintain its clinical management, reach its vaccination targets, institutionalize health care facilities, and implement continuous risk communication with the public.
The independent OCTA Research Group, meanwhile, said the weekly positivity rate in Metro Manila could surpass the region’s peak at 17.5 percent recorded on Aug. 5.
“There is a possibility that this current resurgence will exceed this number,” OCTA said on Twitter.
OCTA also said the NCR’s reproduction number slightly rose to 1.14 as of Sept. 12 from 10.3 on Sept. 5.
Reproduction number refers to the number of people who can be infected by one case. A reproduction number below 1 indicates that the transmission of the virus is slowing down.
According to OCTA, the one-week growth rate in NCR also increased to 18 percent from negative 4 percent.
The group said health care utilization also increased to 39 percent or 2,522 occupied beds as of Sept. 14m up from 36 percent or 2,319 occupied beds as of Sept. 5.
Over the same period, ICU occupancy also went up to 33 percent from 24 percent.
“These are still considered low. The rise in cases in the NCR is likely to cause a corresponding rise in infections in nearby regions; Rizal and Bulacan are currently on an uptrend,” OCTA said.
On Wednesday, the WHO urged countries around the globe to seize the opportunity to end the pandemic, saying the “end is in sight.”
“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic… We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty,” he said.
In other developments:
• The DOH said it will receive an additional 720,000 doses of pediatric Pfizer vaccines from the Australian government through the support of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). In a statement, the DOH said the 720,000 doses will arrive within the same week to complete 3 million pediatric Pfizer vaccine doses. The Philippines has currently received 2,280,000 doses of pediatric Pfizer vaccines from the Australian government, the DOH said.
• The DOH reported some 167 additional cases of highly contagious offshoots of the Omicron COVID-19 variant. The Philippines found 163 new cases of the omicron BA.5, 2 more cases of the BA.4 and 2 tagged as “other sublineages,” latest figures from the DOH show.