Drastic drop in covid 19 cases, high booster jab rate could signal face mask removal
By Nidz Godino
“I keep monitoring this BA.2 sub-variant and even the BA.1 if both drastically decrease to a point that they no longer cause a surge in COVID-19 cases, and possibly this could be an indicator that wearing of face mask may be dropped”, Infectious disease expert Dr. Rontgene Solante sees decrease in BA.1 and the BA.2 or Stealth Omicron infections and increase in administration of booster shots as possible indicators for removal of face masks in the country amid COVID-19 pandemic.
Solante stressed BA.2 infection will subside if number of people getting COVID-19 booster shot goes up.
On January 25, the Department of Health (DOH) said BA.1 and the BA.2, two sub-lineages of the more transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant, have been detected in the country.
“Based on early data, this BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1 by 1.5 fold. It also has a tendency to be more severe, aside from BA.2 being highly transmissible, it also has the ability to still infect even the vaccinated” Solante said.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has said country has already crossed past crisis stage when it comes to surge caused by Omicron variant.
Solante alse said still vital to keep wearing face masks as it still gives high protection against COVID-19.
Maybe, face mask is the last health measure that we will remove, he said in Filipino.
Earlier, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said mandatory use of face masks would “most likely” be dropped by the fourth quarter of the year.
Duque is not in favor of lifting of the mandatory face mask policy anytime soon.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said masks may go by the end of the year, if COVID-19 cases are already manageable and the country reaches endemic state.
DOH noted 62.3 million Filipinos are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, representing 69.8% of the 77-million target
Philippines over the weekend logged another lowest daily COVID-19 tally this year with 1,923 COVID-19 cases, increasing nationwide tally to 3,650,748.
Health Undersecretary and treatment czar Leopoldo Vega said Filipinos’ hesitancy in taking vaccine against COVID-19 has gone down to 10%.
“At the start, since last year, vaccine hesitancy was at about 30%, but it has already gone down to 10%,” he said.
Vega pointed out that the government is looking for ways to encourage this 10% vaccine-hesitant population to get the COVID-19 jabs, through house-to-house efforts and continuous vaccination drives.
On Saturday, DOH said government fell short of the five-million vaccination target of the third wave of the “Bayanihan, Bakunahan” national vaccination drive from February 10 to 18,2022.
Only 3.5 million individuals were inoculated against COVID-19 at the conclusion of drive, DOH noted.
Vega said one of the reasons why government did not reach its five million quota was that inoculation is still slow particularly in certain areas in the Mindanao region affected by Typhoon Odette.
He assured public that despite Bayanihan, Bakunahan III’s shortfall, vaccination drive in the country will still continue to get at least 77 million Filipinos vaccinated by the end of March.
He also called the senior citizens or those in the A2 category to get the jab as only 65% of them are vaccinated.
“We need to increase efforts to look for the senior citizens because they are very vulnerable and they are primarily at risk for COVID-19,” he added.
He stressed that there are AstraZeneca doses that will expire by the end of February and early March, thus the government is aiming to administer them particularly in areas with low vaccination rates.
The government is eyeing to fully vaccinate 90 million Filipinos by the time President Rodrigo Duterte steps down from office on June 30.
On Saturday the Philippines logged another lowest daily COVID-19 tally this year with 1,923 COVID-19 cases, increasing the nationwide tally to 3,650,748.
Independent monitoring group OCTA Research said Lucena City, Quezon is now classified as being at “very low risk” for COVID-19 due to improved data.
In a tweet, OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David showed Lucena has “very low” average daily attack rate (ADAR) of 0.79 and positivity rate of 3%.
ADAR refers to daily average number of new cases per 100,000 people.
Positivity rate, on the other hand, refers to the percentage of people who were found positive for COVID-19 among total number of individuals tested.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is high transmission rate of virus at 5% or higher.
Lucena also recorded 0.13 reproduction rate and healthcare utilization rate (HCUR) of 15%.
Reproduction rate refers to the number of people infected by one case. Reproduction number below 1 indicates transmission of the virus is slowing down.
OCTA noted National Capital Region (NCR) remains at “low risk” for COVID-19 with an ADAR of 3.19 an improvement from 3.36 recorded on Friday, February 18.
NCR’s positivity rate remains at 6%, but it’s HCUR slightly decreased from 26% to 25%. It’s reproduction rate also remained at 0.20.
Aside from NCR, other cities under the low risk category are Angeles, Bacolod, Dagupan, Lapu Lapu, Olongapo, and Tacloban.
Philippines has recorded fewest number of daily COVID-19 cases this year at 1,712, raising the total case count to 3,652,203.
DOH said the country’s positivity rate was at 8.8%. The total conducted COVID-19 tests were 28,500.
The new infections brought active cases to 60,532, of which 856 are asymptomatic; 55,102 are mild; 1,421 are severe; 305 are in critical condition.
Of the cases reported on Sunday, DOH said 1,611 or 94% occurred within recent 14 days from February 7 to 20.
The top regions with cases in the recent two weeks were NCR with 316 or 20%, Region 4A with 221 or 14%, and Region 6 with 180 or 11%.
Total recoveries also increased to 3,535,987 after 3,686 more patients recovered from the disease.
The death toll climbed to 55,684 with 77 new fatalities.
Of the 77 deaths, DOH said 51 occurred in February 2022, 20 in January 2022, three in October 2021, and three in September 2021 due to the late encoding of death information to its system.
The DOH noted that 257 duplicates were removed from the total case count, while 61 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
The DOH said all laboratories were operational on February 18, while three labs were not able to submit their data on time.
The latest data from DOH also showed that 30% of the country’s intensive care unit beds were utilized, while 15% of the mechanical ventilators were also in use.
In Metro Manila, 27% of the ICU beds were utilized, while 17% of the ventilators were in use.
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