The Department of Health (DOH) on Friday said the Omicron BQ.1, a sublineage of the highly transmissible BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus, has been detected in the Philippines, citing results of the latest genome sequencing.
The DOH said 14 cases of BQ.1 have been detected based on the latest genome sequencing of UP-Philippine Genome Center, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, and San Lazaro Hospital from Oct. 28 to Nov. 18.
Of these 14 cases, 13 were local cases from the Cordillera Administrative Region, Regions 1, 4A, 7, and National Capital Region (NCR), it said.
The Health Department has yet to confirm if the remaining case is a returning overseas Filipino.
At the news briefing, DOH officer-in-charge Ma. Rosario Vergeire said BQ.1 is “more transmissible and highly immune evasive” compared to other Omicron subvariants.
US health regulators on Friday estimated that BQ.1 and closely related BQ.1.1 accounted for 16.6 percent of coronavirus variants in the country, nearly doubling from last week, while Europe expects them to become the dominant variants in a month.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said the variants are likely to drive up cases in the coming weeks to months in the European region.
Meanwhile, it is unfair to blame the Health Technology AssessmentCouncil (HTAC) for the 31 million COVID-19 vaccine doses that were wasted, Vergeire said Friday.
“If you look at it carefully, there were several factors that led to this kind of wastage,” Vergeire told CNN Philippines.
The HTAC is an independent advisory body created under the Republic Act 11223 or the Universal Health Care Act, with the overall role of providing guidance to the DOH and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) on the coverage of health interventions and technologies to be funded by the government.
During the budget deliberations of the DOH on Thursday, Senator Risa Hontiveros revealed that 31.3 million doses of vaccines are going to waste.
Former Health Secretary and Iloilo Rep. Janet Garin said that HTAC, the group that advises the DOH, should share the blame for the wastage.
Garin said that while other countries were already administering COVID-19 booster shots, HTAC has yet to decide on when to give booster shots and is still waiting on the result of their clinical trials.
However, Vergeire said HTAC, the Food and Drug Administration, and other experts worked hard to generate evidence to show that vaccines are safe.
“So, I think there was really no one to blame. It’s unfair to blame the experts. They did their job. We did everything expeditiously,” Vergeire said.
“It just so happened that evidence was really not that complete and our experts cannot be forced to decide if the evidence is not complete,” she added.
Of the 31.3 million doses, Vergeire said 24.4 million expired while 7 million doses were wasted due to operational causes such as temperature excursions, calamities, and vials that were opened but not completely used.
Vergeire said that of the 24.4 million doses, 1.75 percent were procured by the government, 70 percent were procured by both the private sector and local government units, and 10 percent to 15 percent were donations.
The Health undersecretary estimated that 1.75 percent of doses cost about P1.1 billion.
“If we look at it, the estimate of the price across the board, across all these vaccines, would be P500. It’s around P1.1 billion,” she said.
Vergeire said the regions that recorded the most vaccine wastage were Region 5, Region 3, the National Capital Region, Region 7, and the Bangsamoro Region.
Meanwhile, the Philippines’ COVID-19 deaths have gone down to an average of 12 per day, the independent OCTA Research Group on Friday.
OCTA research fellow Guido David the seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths dropped from 38 on Oct. 21, to 12 on Nov. 21.
Guido said the highest seven-day average of deaths recorded was 267 on Aug. 22, 2021, during the Delta surge.
He said that among the 64,524 Covid-19 deaths reported in the Philippines, 42,260 or 65.5 percent occurred in 2021.
OCTA said at least 13,105 reported COVID-19 deaths or 20 percent of the total have been recorded in 2022.
On Thursday, the Philippines recorded 1,141 new COVID-19 cases, while the active tally increased to 17,393, the DOH said.
The nationwide COVID-19 tally is currently 4,029,201, as the number of active cases increased from 17,049 on Wednesday.
