The Department of Health (DOH) recorded only 360 new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases on Monday, Dec. 13.
Monday's report brought the national tally of COVID-19 cases to 2,836,803 since the beginning of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
According to the data from DOH, 11,083 were active cases or 0.4 percent of the total number. Of these, 4,292 were mild, 3,662 were moderate, 1,948 were severe, 782 were asymptomatic and 399 were in critical condition.
DOH also reported 519 new recoveries bringing the total to 2,775,379 or 97.8 percent of the total cases and 61 who have died bringing the death toll from the virus to 50,341 or 1.77 percent of the total number of cases.
Meanwhile, Dr. Rontgene Solante, chief of San Lazaro Hospital's Adult Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine Unit, said in an interview on DZMM that as long as there still not much information on the Omicron COVID-19 variant, it is still better to remain under Alert Level 2 until the end of the month.
World Health Organization Country Rep. Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said in an interview on CNN Philippines that they are still trying to understand the Omicron variant.
"It appears that from initial reports coming out of South Africa that the Omicron variant is more transmissible than the globally predominant Delta variant," he said.
Yet he added that when the Omicron variant emerged from South Africa, the Delta variant was the predominant COVID-19 variant.
"We are trying to understand how Omicron will compete with Delta and this is what we are looking at on a global scale," Abeyasinghe said.