President Duterte has said that the country's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) situation is "becoming more alarming every day".
Duterte gave this description of the situation after the Department of Health (DOH) recorded on Monday, Jan. 10 a new record-high in terms of new daily COVID-19 cases--over 33,000.
"There is no denying that the COVID-19 situation in the country is becoming more alarming every day. Madaling sabi, may problema tayo (To say it simply, we have a problem)," he said during this pre-taped "Talk to the People" public briefing on late Monday night.
"New cases of COVID-19 continue to rise daily from more than 21,000 in January to more than 33,000 today. We also continue to see a spike in the number of active cases in the same period from around 77,000 to more than 157,000," he added.
To be exact, health authorities tallied 33,169 fresh infections on Monday.
According to Duterte, the arrival of the different mutations or variants of COVID-19 have made things difficult.
In the same briefing, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said that the highly-transmissible Omicro variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 as far as the new samples that they have subjected to genomic sequencing are concerned.
"I hope that’s the same banana that is applicable to all ‘yung mga gamot natin (our medicines)," Duterte said.
The Chief Executive further said that on Jan. 7, experts noted a high COVID-19 reproduction rate in National Capital Region (NCR) of more than five.
"Meaning, there is one COVID positive person that can in --- that can be able or can infect more than five persons. Ang taas naman nito (This is quite high), tsk," he said.
"Our positivity rate as of Jan. 10 was about 46 percent. Meaning, that at least four out of 10 persons tested for COVID-19 will turn out to be positive," Duterte also lamented.
"So what we did was after placing Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal and Laguna under Alert Level 3 to reduce the mobility and the exposure of the coronavirus. More localities will be placed under the stricter quarantine period pagka talagang grabe ang sitwasyon (if the situation really worsens)," he said.