The Department of Health (DOH) reported on Tuesday, Jan. 18 an additional 28,471 cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the lowest number since the past week.
The country's daily COVID-19 cases have not been lower than 30,000 since exactly one week ago on Jan. 11 with 28,007 new COVID-19 cases.
Tuesday's case bulletin brings the total number of cases to 3,270,758 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Active COVID-19 cases stood at 284,458 or 8.7 percent of the tota; number of cases.
Of this, 270,784 are mild, 8,930 are asymptomatic, 2,957 are moderate, 1,484 are severe while 303 are in critical condition.
DOH also reported 34,892 new recoveries bringing the total to 2,933,33 while 34 died, bringing the death toll to 52,962.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire reported that there is a steep increase in hospital admissions in Metro Manila. She said that with the increasing number of hospital admissions in the National capital Region in the past week, with bed utilization now at 60 percent and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) utilization at 558 percent, it is important to mitigate the risks of Omicron with the new health protocols by DOH.
DOH's data showed that almost 98.3 percent of new COVID-19 cases are mild or asymptomatic.
Meanwhile, Infectious disease expert Dr. Edsel Salvana said that the experience with COVID-19 variant Omicron is different than with the Delta variant as he observed that the ICU is not filled with patients.
But he said that the low admission is not necessarily due to Omicron but the increase in COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots wherein breakthrough infections seem to be milder and likened it to a normal flu.
Dr. Anna Ong-Lim echoed this and said that vaccines against COVID-19 have really been a "game-changer" in terms of impacting on the cases that the country currently has.