Solante: COVID-19 positivity rate upticks not cause for alarm as hospital occupancy still low

The slight increases in COVID-19 positivity rate should not be a cause of concern now as the hospital admissions for severe and critical cases remain low, infectious diseases expert Dr. Rontgene Solante said Monday.

The health professional made the remark after OCTA Research recorded an uptick in the National Capital Region’s (NCR) positivity rate from 2.0% on January 26, to 2.4% on January 27.

Positivity rate refers to the percentage of people who were found positive for COVID-19 among the total number of individuals tested.

“For so many months now, most of the hospitals are low in terms of occupancy dito sa mga severe COVID and ‘yun naman ang maganda dito dahil even if the cases are going up, most of the time, mababa pa rin ang hospitalization occupancy rate especially sa mga critical COVID cases,” Solante said in an interview on Super Radyo dzBB.

(For so many months now, the occupancy of most of the hospitals for severe COVID is low. That's the good thing here because even if the cases are going up, most of the time, the hospital occupancy rate is still low especially among critical COVID cases.)

“Ang implikasyon, mataas ang hawaan pero mababa ang nag-develop ng severe COVID,” he added.

(The implication is that the rate of infection is high but the number of people who develop severe COVID is low.)

Solante, however, explained that any surge or spike in COVID-19 infections may mean that a new variant or Omicron subvariant may have entered the country, thus continuous monitoring is important.

Last week, Department of Health (DOH) officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said that hospital admissions in the country have become manageable with COVID-19 no longer among the Philippines’ top 10 causes of deaths.

Based on data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on January 23, COVID-19 was already identified as the 11th leading cause of death in the Philippines, with 9,749 cases or 2.3% of the total deaths from January to September 2022.

Despite this, Solante still encouraged people to get vaccinated and boosted, and comply with the minimum public health standards, especially masking.

“Nandito pa rin tayo sa pandemic. Nandito pa rin ‘yung COVID. And especially, the COVID virus has totally mutated to a more highly transmissible virus. Nandito pa rin tayo sa stage na hindi dapat tayo kumpiyansa,” he said.

(We are still in the pandemic. The COVID is still here. And especially, the COVID virus has totally mutated to a more highly transmissible virus. We are still at the stage where we should not be complacent.)

On Sunday, the Philippine tally of active COVID-19 cases fell to 9,982, even as the country reported 166 new infections. This active caseload was the lowest in nearly seven months since the 9,703 active cases monitored on July 3 last year and the first time since that day that the total was below 10,000.—AOL, GMA Integrated News