There is already a community transmission of the Delta variant of the coronavirus in the country, the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) said Saturday, August 21.
“Ako professionally, and we at the Philippine Genome Center, while we do our analysis and we try to link the cases, based on the phylogenetic tree that we are doing, it is really a community transmission,” Dr. Cynthia Saloma, PGC Executive Director, said in an interview with DZBB.
While the PGC cannot sequence all the positive cases, Saloma believes that the Delta variant is the main cause of the surge of COVID-19 cases in the country.
"Sa aking palagay, may kinalaman ang Delta variant sa pagtaas ng mga kaso ng COVID-19... Marami nang kaso na hindi alam kung saan nagmula (In my opinion, the Delta variant is associated with an increase in COVID-19 cases.. There are already many cases that we do not know where it came from)," she added.
She also noted that multiple areas outside NCR were also affected by the said variant.
Saloma, meanwhile, stressed that COVID-19 vaccines are effective in preventing hospitalization and deaths of patients infected with the Delta variant.
"When we talk about Delta variant, mabilis talaga ito kumalat pero kapag nabakunahan ang mga tao, mape-prevent nating ang hospitalization o death (When we talk about Delta variant, it spreads really fast but when people are vaccinated, we can prevent hospitalization or death)," she told DZBB.
As for the Lambda variant, Saloma said out of more than 11,000 whole genome sequences analyzed since January, only one case were detected in the country.
She added there are only 4,000 cases of the Lambda recorded worldwide.
The Philippines has so far detected 807 Delta variant cases as of August 20.
On Friday, August 20, the country recorded 17,231 new COVID-19 cases, the highest in a single day since the pandemic began in March last year.