Experts believe so as new COVID cases hit another high at 3,604
Experts believe the new BA.2.75—or Centaurus omicron subvariant—may already be present in the country, after projections of a possible peak of COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila were pushed back and cases continue to increase.
This developed as COVID-19 numbers hit another new daily high in five months, as the Department of Health (DOH) on Saturday reported 3,604 new cases in the country, the highest since February 12.
Dr. Guido David of independent research group OCTA said the current surge wasn’t following a typical pattern where cases would decline continuously and attributed the rise in cases to other COVID subvariants that are circulating.
David also believes the cases may surge until August, which coincides with the start of the school year, contrary to the previous projection that cases may peak in July and decrease during August.
The National Capital Region alone had 1,324 new COVID infections, said the health department. It also reported 14 new deaths from the coronavirus disease, bringing the total to 60,670.
The number of active cases also breached 25,000, and at 25,743 is the highest since April 12. The country’s positivity rate or the ratio of people testing positive for COVID-19 from July 17 to 21 reached 14 percent.
Meanwhile, the directive to subject Filipino nationals to daily COVID-19 tests in Macau is “purely a health issue” and should not be politicized, the Philippine Consulate General in the Chinese island state said Saturday.
The Macau government earlier ordered any resident who holds a Philippine passport to take a daily nucleic test from July 22 to 24. About 30,000 Filipinos reside and work in Macau, based on the latest data from the consulate.
David compared the country’s current surge to South Africa’s, saying: “There, more or less, they had a quick surge. One month going up, one month going down, then it ends. This was (fueled by) Omicron BA.5.”
“But our current surge seems to be prolonged, or whatever you want to call it, wave (maybe),” he added. “It did not behave according to the patterns we were expecting.”
Dr. Rontgene Solante of the DOH technical advisory group also noted the same observation.
While authorities have not confirmed the presence of the subvariant in their latest genome sequencing report, Solante said he is not discounting the idea that Centaurus may also be present in the country.
“Actually, it already peaked and was supposed to go down, which is characteristic of the previous increase in the cases before with the first variants of concern. It was unlikely to go up again,” Solante said.
Initial evidence showed that the Centaurus subvariant is more infectious compared to other subvariants. However, the DOH said that it’s too early to say if this is more dangerous, especially since hospitals haven’t been fully occupied yet.
“They say this would be much (more) transmissible compared to the other subvariants of omicron. But the evidence where we can say this will produce more severe and critical cases is incomplete. This is being monitored by our international epidemiologists and experts,” DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said.
In an advisory, the PH consulate said the order is solely based on the volume of Filipinos who have caught the disease which, for the past two weeks, make up 24.5 percent of the community infection in Macau.
“The Philippine Consulate General, at the outset of this directive, has issued its position taking the directive as purely a health issue. And yet there are those who remain focused on politicizing this. To put this issue to rest, the Philippine Consulate General has expressed its agreement to the findings shared by the Macau Health Bureau that necessitates the issuance of a directive to our nationals in Macau,” it said.
The consulate noted that the same directive had been imposed on other nationals from neighboring countries in the past and it “worked” without anyone raising a discrimination issue of it.
“Are we Filipinos better than our sisters and brothers from our neighbor countries just because we have a significant number in Macau?” the advisory read.
“The Filipino community and other migrant communities belong to the larger society of Macau now facing a serious threat. Let us all be part of the solution and provide our support and cooperation in fulfilling our role to help overcome this clear and present danger.”
A July 21 report by financial, software, data, and media company Bloomberg quoted health official Leong Iek Hou as saying that Filipinos “tend to have more gatherings, like meeting among friends” in Macau.
“It’s likely that they have more interactions within their own ethnicity, so we need to find out whether there are hidden sources of infections among them via frequent testing,” Leong said.
