The Department of Health (DOH) is seeing a gradual increase of Covid-19 cases in 14 areas under Alert Level 1.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III made the statement at the summary of his report during the President's pre-recorded public address on Monday night, April 18.
"Nakakakita na naman tayo nang dahan-dahan na bahagyang pagtaas ng mga kaso sa 14 na mga lugar under Alert Level 1 (We are seeing again a gradual increase of cases in 14 areas under Alert Level 1)," he said.
Yet he did not enumerate the said areas. However, he reported that the top regions with new cases are the National Capital Region (NCR) with 606 cases; Region 4A with 226 cases and Region 3 with 181 cases. The top areas with new cases are Cavite with 101; Manila with 92 and Quezon City with 82.
Duque stated in his report that on Monday (April 18), the country recorded 170 new Covid-19 cases which he said was as low as when the Delta surge ended in December 2021 which was below 200 cases.
DOH recorded 1,674 new Covid-19 cases in the past week. The country's seven-day moving average was down to 239 cases which is 12 percent lower than cases from April 4 to April 10.
In DOH's weekly case bulletin, the agency said that there are currently 664 severe and critical Covid-19 cases admitted which comprises 11.5 percent of the total Covid-19 admissions. One case was tagged under severe and critical. The DOH also reported 200 more fatalities from Covid-19, 43 of which died between April 4 to April 17.
Also, of the 2,842 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds, 450 or 15.8 percent are being used. On the other hand, 4,164 or 16.9 percent out of 24,645 non-ICU beds are utilized.