Philippines COVID-19 curve shows steep decline, then a plateau —DOH

There has been no spike in the number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the previous days, causing the country’s epidemic curve to plateau, the Department of Health (DOH) said Tuesday.

“Our epidemic curve shows a very steep decline and now a plateau,” Health Epidemiology Bureau Director Dr. Alethea de Guzman said during the DOH Kapihan.

‘Yung number of cases na na re-report natin ay halos pareho na po sa mga nakaraang araw (the cases we are reporting are almost the same in the previous days),” she added.

According to De Guzman, the Philippines reported 380 cases per day in the recent week, lower by 26% compared to last week’s 516 cases daily.

“So this is among our lowest after we’ve had several peaks since the start of August 2020 last year, and April 2021, and September 2021 peaks natin,” De Guzman said.

Similarly, De Guzman said COVID-19 cases in the country’s island groups and the National Capital Region seem as if they are on a plateau.

“And much like the national data and all other island groups, flat na halos ‘yung datos no, yung bagong nare-report na kaso natin dito sa Metro Manila,” she said.

NCR averaged at 80 cases per day this week, lower by 20% from the previous week.

As all regions in the country are now at minimal risk for COVID-19, De Guzman said the decline in cases was reflected in the country’s utilization rate.

“This decline in cases is reflected in our utilization rates at makikita natin lahat ng ating utilization rates, may they be the total bed utilization or the ICU bed utilization are naka low risk na tayo,” she said.

De Guzman also said severe and critical cases among hospital admissions have declined.

“So tuloy-tuloy na meron tayong admission subalit nakikita natin ‘yung dami at porsyento ng severe at critical ay tuloy-tuloy na bumababa o halos pareho lang nung nakaraang buwan,” De Guzman added.

(Even though our admissions continue, we see that the percentage of severe and critical are continuously decreasing in the past month.)

Meanwhile, De Guzman said the country’s mortality curve is also showing a decline.

Currently, she said the DOH has recorded 80 deaths which occurred from December 1 to December 14, averaging at 6 deaths per day.

“Our case fatality rate this year is lower than last year and kung titignan po natin sa bawat buwan, while there may be increases no, especially ‘yung mga panahon na nagpe-peak tayo or immediately after we peak, our case fatality rate have remained largely under 2%,” she said.

(Our case fatality rate this year is lower than last year and if you look at each month, while there may be increases during peaks or after peaks, it remained largely under 2%.)

The country’s current case fatality rate stood at 1.64%.

According to De Guzman, the case fatality rate is computed by the number of deaths that occurred among cases divided by the number of cases and then multiplied by 100.

De Guzman stressed that the analysis will compute fatalities on when they occurred and not when they were reported.

“We don’t look at one metric alone because if we look at just the case fatality rate, we may misinterpret it as a worsening of our situation when it comes to deaths,” she said. 

“When in fact, if we correlate it with number one, our total deaths and the average deaths per day, makikita natin na with each time period, the number and average deaths per day is actually continuously declining,” she added. —NB, GMA News