Cabinet Secretary and Acting Presidential Spokesperson Karlo Nograles has named nine locations from all over the country that could get escalated to Alert Level 4 if local authorities don't do the necessary adjustments on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) bed capacity.
"Ngayon mayroon tayong mga binabantayan na lugar na nakikipag-ugnayan din po tayo sa kanila (Now we're looking at several areas and we're also coordinating with them)," Nograles said during a virtual press conference Friday, Jan. 21.
"Ito po 'yung (These are)...Bataan, Iloilo City, Ormoc City, Naga City, Dagupan City, Western Samar, Tacloban City, Biliran, at (and) Zamboanga del Sur," he said.
Nograles, the spokesperson of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), said it's up to the concerned local government units (LGUs) to raise the number of their dedicated beds for COVID-19 patients, or else get escalated from Alert Level 3 to Alert Level 4.
"If they increase their dedicated COVID beds then...they will stay in Alert Level 3. But kung mag-breach po sila ng threshold, then no choice po tayo kung 'di i-escalate ang mga 'yan (But of they breach the threshold, then we have no choice but to escalate them)," he noted.
"That's why we are actively coordinating with them, the respective LGUs na tignan nila yung mga metrics nila (to look at their metrics)," he said.
The Philippines is currently grappling with a ferocious new surge in COVID-19 cases that's supposedly being fueled by the Omicron variant.
Last week, Nograles explained that having a COVID-19 bed utilization rate of between 71 percent and 84 percent would lead to Alert Level 4 being hoisted in that region or LGU.
He said during the same presser that the National Capital Region (NCR), which remains under Alert Level 3, still hasn't breached this usage rate. However, he said the IATF is keeping its eyes peeled on NCR's COVID figures.
"At yung ibang mga lugar din (And the other places too), we're also consistently monitoring them, advising them. We are now pushing the regional IATFs to also help us...in monitoring mga beds, ang (the) dedicated beds," Nograles said.
Kalinga, Northern Samar, Mountain Province, and Ifugao were earlier placed under Alert Level 4--the second highest protocol under the Alert Level System (ALS) for COVID-19 response.