Delta variant still dominant COVID-19 variant in Philippines, says DOH

Delta is still the dominant COVID-19 variant in the country,  the Department of Health said on Tuesday amid the continued steep spike in coronavirus cases in the country attributed to the more infectious Omicron.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said 43% of the detections in the country are Delta, followed by the Beta variant at 18%, and Alpha at 15%.

Meanwhile, the Omicron variant is at 0.21% with a total of 43 cases.

“Sa ngayon po, ang Delta variant pa rin ang pinaka mataas na merong lineage dito sa ating bansa,” Vergeire said in a media briefing.

[As of now, Delta is still the variant with the highest lineage in our country.]

During President Rodrigo Duterte's public address, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Omicron 

However, Vergeire said the secretary was only referring to the latest genome sequencing which yielded 29 new Omicron cases and 18 new Delta cases.

Vergeire said the Delta variant is still circulating in the Philippines.

“Makikita po natin sa graph na ito na while the epidemic curve is indicative of the Omicron variant, the Delta variant ay nag ci-circulate pa rin ayon sa ating genome sequencing,” she said.

(We can see from this graph that while the epidemic curve is indicative of the Omicron variant, the Delta variant is still circulating based on our genome sequencing.)

She said the agency is expecting cases to further increase due to Omicron.

“With what’s happening… yung trend ng mga kaso kung paano nag do-doble ang mga kaso, kung ano po ‘yung mga na-experience na sintomas ng mga tao, ‘yung likelihood na andito na ang Omicron sa ating mga komunidad is very high,” she said.

Despite this, Vergeire said the case doubling time has increased to three to four days from 2.2. days. 

Community interventions

Amid the community transmission in NCR, Vergeire said the policy tends to shift and the agency is focused on community interventions

“Right now, number one, contact tracing is not that much prioritized anymore because we know that in each household, the possibility or the likelihood that there is one positive individual is very high,” she said.

Meanwhile, she said the agency will be prioritizing the testing of the A1, A2, and A3 groups.

“Our testing before, what we are doing before to detect who is positive so that we can immediately isolate and quarantine, becomes of second nature right now because we would like to prioritize our A1, A2, and A3,” she said.

“Now for community interventions, the most important right now would be isolation,” she added.

Other variants

Meanwhile, the DOH maintained that there are no cases of the Deltacron or IHU variants detected in the Philippines.

Dr. Edsel Salvana of the DOH-Technical Advisory Group, however, said Deltacron may be the result of a “lab error” while the IHU is neither classified as a variant of concern nor a variant of interest.

Salvana said experts have been studying the IHU since November.

“Mukhang wala namang problema (it seems like there’s no problem),” he said. —NB, GMA News