Covid-19 cases in the Philippines are expected to increase in the coming months as restrictions are further eased, particularly on the use of face masks, the Department of Health (DOH) said.
The Philippine government is set to make indoor mask-wearing voluntary across the country as recently announced by Department of Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco.
Aside from this factor, DOH Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said the presence of new variants of Covid-19 virus and increased mobility of people can also cause a spike in cases.
“People have to understand. The virus is here, expectedly cases will rise not just because of the removal of face masks. Because there are new subvariants that have been here in the country which have evaded our immunity,” she said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel on Thursday, Oct. 27.
Vergeire also reiterated the DOH warning that cases may rise to as high as 18,000 per day by next month based on recent projections.
READ: DOH: Covid-19 cases in PH may reach 18K daily by mid-November
“As a doctor and based on the scientific projections that has been done by our experts, once we loosen up the masking, maari pong magkaroon tayo ng mga kaso (we may have cases) towards November and December from 2,500, and ang pinakamataas po, yung (and the highest or the) higher limit would be around 18,000 cases,” she said.
However, Vergeire believes that the country’s health system can be able to manage such a number in the event that scenario happens.
“So, expectedly, cases are there. It’s going to increase. But what we need to preserve would be our healthcare system capacity,” she said.
“For that, as I’ve said, even through this recent na pagtaas ng kaso, na-accommodate po ng system natin. Nakita natin (increase in cases, our system manages to accommodate cases. We saw) we were able to manage. Hopefully, we’ll be able to manage in the coming months,” she added.
To note, the average number of Covid-19 cases per day in the country is at 1,714, the DOH reported last Oct. 24.