The Department of Health (DOH) reported on Wednesday, Jan. 19 two deaths from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) variant Omicron.

DOH sais that both deaths were aged more than 60 years, unvaccinated, and had pre-existing medical conditions.

"While Omicron mostly presents with asymptomatic and mild disease, our data shows that those most at risk for fatalities are still the elderly and those with co-morbidities and unvaccinated," DOH said.

In a statement, DOH said that it detected 492 additional local and foreign cases from Returning Overseas Filipinos (ROF) of Omicron in the latest batch of whole genome sequencing done on January 13 to 14.

DOH said that the Omicron cases were composed of 332 local cases and 160 ROFs. Of the 332 local cases, the indicated addresses of the cases were from the National Capital Region (NCR) with 227 cases, CALABARZON with 76 cases, Central Luzon with 11 cases, Central Visayas with five cases, while there were two cases each from Cagayan Valley, Western Visayas, Davao Region, SOCCSKSARGEN, and the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), and one case each from Ilocos Region, MIMAROPA, and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Based on the case line list provided by DOH, three cases are still active, while two have died. The 467 other cases have been tagged as recovered, while there are 20 cases whose outcomes are still being verified.

This update brings the total number of confirmed Omicron variant cases to 535.

Meanwhile, DOH, the University of the Philippines - Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC), the University of the Philippines - National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH), and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) reported that of the 714 samples sequenced, 492 were Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant cases (68.9%), 115 ere Delta (B.1.617.2) variant cases (16.1 percent), and one Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant case (0.1 percent) were detected in the latest batch of whole genome sequencing.