More adults and children grew obese during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health (DOH) said.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, the DOH Officer in Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said this was reported by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Of course, the main reason for this increase in obesity was that we were all on lockdown,” she said in Filipino.
The lockdowns kept people at home with little opportunity for exercise or physical activities.
The quality of food, too, was limited as many people simply ordered fast food online.
Obesity is a precuror to diabetes, heart disease and stroke and other non-communicable diseases, Vergeire said.
She advised mothers to monitor the quality of food consumed by their children.
She also highlighted the importance of exercise.
The Department of Science and Technology-Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI) said the obesity rates among children aged 0 to 5 are at 3.9 percent, while children aged 5 to 10 are at 14 percent, according to its 2021 Expanded National Nutrition Survey (ENNS).
Ten percent of adults aged 20 to 59 are obese. For those aged 60 and above, 6.2 percent are obese, and 11.8 percent have chronic energy deficiency.
The ENNS surveyed 141,189 Filipinos in 37 provinces and cities between July 2021 and June 2022 to quantify Filipinos’ health and food security conditions at the height of the pandemic.
At the same time, Vergeire said the COVID-19 situation in the Philippines is still too uncertain to say that the disease has become endemic.
Vergeire pointed to the low immunity and the low booster coverage in the country as a source of uncertainty.
“The booster rate of the population is now low that’s why we see that the cases in the country may still go up and the effect of these subvariants to the immunity in the population,” she said.
But she said she agreed with Dr. Edsel Salvana, an infectious diseases expert, who said the COVID-19 situation was becoming endemic.
“We can really see that COVID-19 seems to be becoming endemic in the sense that it’s already circulating like the cold.
It’s not really going away completely,” Salvana said in Filipino. “And so, for this kind of illness, there are reallyfluctuations in the number of cases.”
Salvana also said that unlike before, the public now relied more on antigen kits than the RT-PCR tests. Results of antigen tests are not recorded.
Salvana said the country could handle the number of cases as long as the health care system remained open.
“COVID is really becoming endemic, that it’s like becoming a regular illness although it can still be fatal especially for the vulnerable population,” Salvana said.
Salvana encouraged the public to get boosters and properly wear face masks even though the government has allowed the optional wearing of face masks.
“At as long (there is a) risk… we can use it as an additional tool for public health prevention,” Salvana said.
Salvana said the risk of dying from COVID-19 or other respiratory illnesses can be minimized if all will wear masks.