DOH observes spike in COVID cases in all regions

The Department of Health has already observed an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in all regions in the Philippines.

DOH Epidemiology Bureau director Dr. Alethea de Guzman disclosed this during a briefing at the House committee on health on Tuesday.

"We have now observed an increase in cases across all regions and all provinces, highly-urbanized cities and independent component cities but there are still areas whose counts are lower than what we are seeing now in the NCR Plus but we're already seeing continuous and swift increases," De Guzman said.

She noted that the increase alone in the National Capital Region and nearby provinces, or the NCR Plus, is larger than the peak that was observed in September 2021 brought by the Delta coronavirus variant.

Still, hospitalization as well as severe and critical cases were less than what were observed in August to September of last year.

De Guzman said the increase in cases was driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

However, the increased mobility and reduced adherence to minimum public health standards as well as the delays in detection and isolation also contributed to the spike of infections, she said.

De Guzman noted that the recorded increase of cases for January 2022 was the "fastest and largest case increase since the start of the pandemic."

Further, the DOH official said "while the increase has slowed down, we are not yet seeing any decline in our cases."

Earlier, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said the Philippines remains at critical risk for COVID-19 even as the growth rate of infections have slowed down.

Duque said the Omicron variant is already composing 90% of the latest genome sequencing.

On Monday, the country logged 37,070 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the nationwide tally to 3,242,374 and active cases to 290,938. — RSJ, GMA News