Vaccination remains to be the key component in continually reducing deaths due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Department of Health (DOH) emphasized.
In a media briefing on Tuesday, Nov. 23, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire stated that according to the submitted data reports in the DOH data collect app with a 55 percent report submission rate there was a total of 216,074 COVID-19 cases seen or admitted in the health facilities from March 1 to Nov. 14 2021.
Vergeire explained that patient status in the data collect reflects the most severe COVID-19 classification during the course of their admission and the vaccination status as of the time of their admission.
"Of this total, 86 percent are not fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, about 94 percent are not fully vaccinated among those who died of COVID 19 as presented in these red icons," she pointed out during her presentation.
Vergeire said that analysis on this hospital data showed that deaths and serious outcomes are more likely to happen among unvaccinated patient and that severe and critical cases were 1.75 times more likely to occur among the unvaccinated compared to those fully vaccinated. Also, death was 2.6 times more likely to occur among unvaccinated than those fully vaccinated individuals.
From the data that she presented, it showed that COVID-19 deaths peaked in September, along with the decline of the cases it was seen that weekly deaths have been on a downward trend since the start of October.
Nationally, Vergeire said, the highest reported deaths was in September this year with 218 average deaths per day while October deaths were more than half at 125 deaths while partial data for November reports 566 deaths or an average of 27 deaths per day. Region I reported the highest number of deaths across all regions.