The country is once again under high-risk classification after being under low-risk for more than a month since Nov. 2021, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday, Jan. 3.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a press briefing that current average daily cases have increased significantly by 570 percent from Dec. 27 to Jan 2 which is seven times higher than in previous weeks.

Epidemic curves of major island groups according to Veregeire are also started to show signs of increase in COVID-19 cases and that the National Capital Region (NCR) showed a sharp uptick in cases as in the recent weeks.

"Nationally we are now at high risk case classification from low risk case class in the previous week showing a positive two week growth rate at 222 percent and a moderate risk average daily attack rate at 1.07 cases for every 100,000 individuals," she said.

She added that cases in the recent one week also showed a positive increase.

Meanwhile, the National Health Systems capacity is at low risk with total bed utilization at 18 percent which is two percent higher than the reported utilization rate on Dec. 25 which was at 16 percent while Intensive Care Unit (ICU) utilization is at 22 percent. In the recent week, admissions increased by 9 percent while allocated beds decreased by two percent.

Meanwhile, five regions, namely Regions 4-A, Region 3, Region 9, 11 and 10 showed a positive one week growth rate and two week growth rate.

Vergeire said that these regions are at low to moderate risk classification. The rest of the regions showed positive increase in cases only in the recent one week while healthcare utilization rates in all regions remain to be at low risk,

NCR situation

Metro Manila is also under high-risk case classification. Vergeire said that NCR showed a high risk one week growth rate and two week growth rate and moderate-risk average daily attack rate of 5.42 cases per 100,000 population. The health systems capacity in the region remains to be under 50 percent utilization.

She also mentioned an increased positivity rate in regions or the number of individuals who yielded positive results from among those who were tested for COVID-19.

She said that the largest increase was for NCR where numbers jumped from 932 to 13,756 for the recent week and Region 4-A with 2,792 individuals testing positive in the recent week from just 290 from the previous week.

In the National Capital Region, while total bed utilization remains to be at low risk at 24 percent, admissions are seen to be increasing in the recent week.

Over the course of one week, the NCR saw a 49 percent increase in admissions accompanied by a one percent or 86-bed increase in allocated beds. Similar to the total bed admissions, ICU admissions in NCR showed a slight uptick in the recent week while ICU utilization rate remains to be at low risk overall at 27 percent capacity.

ICU admissions increased by 103 or 44 percent in the recent week, while ICU bed allocation decreased by 88 beds or seven percent.