DOH: COVID-19 cases could peak in mid-September

New COVID-19 cases could peak in the middle of September, the Department of Health (DOH) said Tuesday amid a fresh uptick in infections that led to a record-high 22,366 new cases on Monday.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire noted that the country has been seeing new peaks every week since cases started to “swiftly” increase in the fourth week of July.

Vergeire recalled that during the spike in cases earlier this year, “the highest peak was observed on the sixth week after cases started to increase at the end of February.”

“If the same pattern will occur this time around, we may see cases peak mid-September,” she told a briefing.

“However, these figures will greatly depend on the further improvement on compliance of minimum public health standards, shortening the interval between detection to isolation, faster vaccine deployment, and the granular lockdowns,” she added.

Experts from the University of the Philippines arrived at the same projections. 

Vergeire said the country averaged 17,013 new cases per day from August 24 to 30, higher than the peak of 10,431 daily new cases from March 29 to April 4.

Areas classified as high-risk due to their high average daily attack rate or ICU utilization rate were Metro Manila, the Cordillera Administrative Region, the Bangsamoro region, and Regions 1, 2, 3, 4A, 6, 7, 10, 11, and 12.

“Current case data in NCR and Bulacan is lower than the initial FASSSTER projections, signaling possible effect of the national and local response. But other areas continue to have [an] increase in cases consistent with the case projections,” Vergeire said.

The health official also said it was possible that active cases in Metro Manila were lower than projected due to the high COVID-19 vaccine coverage of the region, which the Metro Manila Council earlier said was at around 70%. 

In a separate briefing, WHO Philippines country representative Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said the government’s pandemic response could be further strengthened by improving the cascading of national guidelines to local authorities.

“What we see here is very good national guidelines. The challenge we are seeing is the cascading of those in a decentralized system to regional, provincial, and local government units,” he said.

“Oftentimes, there are long delays in the cascading of the guidelines in the implementation of the guidelines, and in a very dynamic pandemic where the situation is changing rapidly, that’s something that is adversely impacting the whole pandemic response,” he added.

The Philippines has tallied over 1.97 million COVID-19 cases with 1.79 million recoveries and 33,330 deaths as of Monday afternoon. —LDF, GMA News