There is a possibility that the Department of Health (DOH) will once again release the Covid-19 case bulletin on a daily basis if the country will experience a spike in coronavirus infections again.
If that happens, the case bulletin will still follow the current format—which is highlighting the number of severe and critical cases and the healthcare utilization rate, said DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire.
“Yung posibilidad, oo. Yung posibilidad na ibabalik hindi mismo yung case bulletin na nakikita natin previously—bago tayo nagpalit. Kapag nakita natin na may uptick uli ng kaso, definitely para ma-track po natin lahat ay ito po ay ibabalik as to (The possibility, yes. But not exactly the case bulletin we saw previously. When we observe an uptick in cases again, definitely this will be brought back for all of us to track) the number of cases but this will be different when we try to return this,” said Vergeire on Friday, March 18.
“Kasi kahit na nandoon ang mga kaso mas ipapakita pa rin natin yung mga severe and critical at yung pagkapuno ng ating mga ospital (Even if the number of cases will be included there, we will still highlight the severe and critical cases and the utilization of our hospitals),” she added.
Vergeire said that they will still look into this possible scenario. “Ito po ay ating rerebisahin (we will be discussing this), aligned with whatever we are issuing right now,” she said.
The number of new Covid-19 cases in the Philippines remains on a downward trend, said Vergeire.
“The country continuously sees a slow decline of new Covid-19 cases, low percentage of severe and critical hospital admissions, total beds utilization at low risk, and our national ICU utilization at a steady decline,” she said.
“This can be attributed to the public’s continuous compliance of our minimum public health and safety protocols together with high vaccination rates,” she added.
Antigen test results
The DOH also reported that it received reports of close to about 80,000 positive Covid-19 antigen test results since the start of this year.
“We were able to receive reports already starting in January. Ngayon may kabuuan kaming nakuha na total tests done na 562,632 na total test ng antigen na naireport sa atin, kung saan mayroon tayong 79,586 na nagpositive sa antigen test from January to March 12 and ang positivity rate niyan ay 14.5 percent (Now we have a total of 562,632 total antigen tests reported to us, of which, we have 79,586 who tested positive from January to March 12 —with a positivity rate of 14.5 percent)," said Vergeire.
Coronavirus variants
In a related development, the DOH said the Deltacron coronavirus variant has not yet been detected in the country.
“As of the latest sequencing, tayo ay nakakadetect pa rin mostly ng Omicron na mga variants noong pinakahuli nating sequencing na kasama kasi yung mga backlogs na nagumpisa pa nung (we are still able to detect mostly Omicron variants in our recent sequencing, which includes the backlogs from) I think last 2021,” said Vergeire.
“Kaya meron tayong nadetect na mga Alpha, Beta pero marami pa rin ang nadetect na Omicron (So we have detected Alpha, Beta but we still have a lot of Omicron cases detected) from the samples that were collected from this recent na mga weeks natin dito. Hanggang sa ngayon wala pa po tayong nadedetect na Deltacron dito sa ating bansa (So far we have not detected Deltacron in our country),” she added.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus variant first found in Israel is still being studied by international health experts.
"Ang WHO (World Health Organization) tinatrack nila yung lahat ng ganitong klase ng variants na lumalabas ngunit patuloy pa rin ang pag-aaral, wala pang further announcement ang WHO regarding this matter (The WHO is tracking all these kinds of variants that are emerging but the study is still ongoing, the WHO has no further announcement regarding this matter)," she said.