The Philippines has recorded another less than 1,000 COVID-19 cases on Saturday, Dec. 4, the Department of Health (DOH) said.
The country has been recording below 1,000 cases daily since Nov. 24. The DOH reported 517 new infections on Saturday.
Based on the latest case bulletin, a total of 2,834,294 cases were already confirmed since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Philippines last year.
Of the total, 0.5 percent or 14,338 remain active or those who are still sick. Of these cases, 6,350 people have mild symptoms, 3,837 are in moderate condition, 2,425 have severe symptoms, 815 are in critical condition, while 911 are asymptomatic.
Also, 243 more fatalities and 1,139 new recoveries were confirmed on Saturday, said the DOH .
The country’s death toll stood at 49,230 while the recovery count increased to 2,770,726.
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that all areas in the country were placed under Alert Level 2.
“Mayroon lang po tayong mga kaunting binabantayan but generally lahat po ng regions sa ating bansa ay nasa low risk or minimal risk na po (We only have a few under surveillance but generally all regions in our country are at low risk or minimal risk),” she said.
The deescalation of some areas to Alert Level 1 is still being studied by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), said Vergeire.
“Iyon pong pagdi-deescalate natin to Alert Level 1 ay patuloy na pinag-uusapan ng ating officials sa IATF (The deescalation to Alert Level 1 is still being discussed by our officials at IATF) because there are still other requirements aside from the case trend,” she said.
“And of course ngayon po binabantayan natin at inaantay natin kung ano o iyong magiging characteristic ng Omicron variant (And of course, now we are monitoring what will be the characteristic of the Omicron variant),” she added.
“Sa ngayon (Currently) we are just monitoring first and then we will soon be able inform the public kapag alam na po natin ang mga ebidensiya ukol sa Omicron variant (when we already know the evidence about the Omicron variant),” she furthered.