Covid-19 emergency phase to end soon? DOH optimistic but says it remains 'unknown'

It is still "unknown" whether the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic will end this year, the Department of Health (DOH) believes.
Such a scenario is "difficult to answer" at this point but the Health department is looking forward to it happening, considering the improvements in the number of cases and hospitalizations as compared to the previous two years of the pandemic, said DOH Epidemiology Bureau Director Alethea De Guzman.
"I think that is one of the unknowns...But again, the way to go about it is of course, we are optimistic," she said in a media forum on Friday, Jan. 13.
"We hope na maiwan nga na ganito nalang karami ang ating mga kaso para din may better sense of confidence tayo (that the number of cases currently will not change, so that we can have a better sense of confidence ) in saying that 'you know we're really out of this emergency mode,'" she added.
Based on a Reuters' report, officials of the World Health Organization are set to discuss on Jan. 27 "whether the Covid-19 pandemic still represents a global emergency."
De Guzman said that the SarsCoV-2 or the Covid-19 virus continues to evolve.
"I think much like the World Health Organization, it is really a monitoring/ waiting game for all of us. Bakit? (Why?) We don't want to be blindsided by the emergence of new variants. I think, for me, that's the unknown that remains here," she said.
Amid this development, the emphasis right now should be “reducing hospitalization, admission, and fatalities from Covid,” said the Health official.
"If there would be some stability in the emergence of these variants, I think we would be more comfortable to say that 'yes, the emergency phase will end because while there may be upticks in cases, we know that there would be no significant upticks in our admissions and in our fatalities,'" she added.
"We still a lot of focus on case data but what the Department of Health is saying is that--- you know, we should actually put more emphasis into looking into how much our beds is actually being occupied by Covid, or how many of the proportion of cases that are actually becoming hospitalized or becoming deaths," she said.
Projections
Meanwhile, in case a new variant of concern enters the country, this may cause an increase in the number of hospital admissions, said De Guzman.
Based on her presentation, "projected admissions with the occurrence of an immune escaping variant is expected to peak in late April 2023 with 4,742 total admissions and 612 ICU admissions."
However, De Guzman noted that these projected numbers "will not even reach" the figures that were logged last January to February 2022, wherein the spike in cases was caused by the Omicron variant.
"We know that the number of hospitalizations during that Omicron was actually even less than what we saw with Delta," she said.
"It will not even lead to more hospitalizations based on our historical data but of course, we don't want to set aside the possible negative effect," she added.
Latest DOH case bulletin showed that 4,185 patients were admitted in hospitals (non-ICU) and 431 individuals were occupying ICU beds due to Covid-19, as of Jan. 8.
To prevent this projection from happening, De Guzman said that vaccination, especially boosters, "will actually be the ones to play a big role in lessening or reducing these hospital or ICU admissions."