The Philippines might tally up to 30,000 daily fresh coronavirus cases until the end of September and infections may peak in early October, according to a member of the state university’s pandemic response team.
This developed as a World Health Organization (WHO) official on Tuesday said the Philippines is already experiencing the community transmission of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19.
“What we are seeing in the Philippines is not unique,” said WHO country representative Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe. “It is being seen in other countries.”
“Our projections show that our cumulative cases might reach more than 3 million, even 4 million before 2021 ends,” Professor Jomar Rabajante of the UP Pandemic Response Team told TeleRadyo.
“We have to factor in that this is the Delta variant… We are seeing that cases would still continue to come in until September and then it will decline,” he added.
President Rodrigo Duterte, meanwhile, signaled a shift from city-wide or province-wide quarantines to localized lockdowns.
“Whether the rise in the number of cases is due to the Delta variant or not, we need to recalibrate our response,” Duterte said in his prerecorded Talk to the People delivered Monday night but aired Tuesday morning.
“We are also evaluating whether granular or localized lockdowns would work best in our current situation,” he added, as he directed the National Task Force Against COVID-19 to study the potential benefits of implementing localized lockdowns all throughout the country.
He also noted that local deaths due to the respiratory disease were lower compared to other countries.
“America is suffering. Europe is suffering from a—more died; many died in Turkey; more died in Saudi Arabia. With us, it’s just infection. Our deaths are not that many,” the President said.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the percentage of test samples found to have the Delta variant rose from 6 percent in June to 56 percent in August.
She said this coincides with the start of a steeper rise in the number of cases in July, similar to the start of the April peak in cases with the spread of the Alpha and Beta variants.
In a separate media briefing, Vergeire said the Delta variant has been detected in all 17 regions across the country, except for the Bangsamoro region.
Abeyasinghe said information the WHO has clearly shows that now, the highly infectious and transmissible Delta variant has emerged as the dominant strain.
“With this kind of transmission, with these kinds of numbers, we are in community transmission of the Delta variant,” he said.
Abeyasinghe noted that nearly 70 percent of the samples subjected to genome sequencing in the latest run tested positive for the Delta variant.
He said all the evidence they have at the moment said the Delta variant is transmitted in aerosols, not airborne transmission.
He said wearing two face masks will not guarantee protection from the Delta variant, especially when the masks are not worn properly.
“You don’t need double masking, what you need is diligence in following the minimum public health standards,” he said.
Community transmission means there is a clustering of cases and there are no longer links among infected individuals.
Abeyasinghe said the government’s pandemic response could be further strengthened by improving the cascading of national guidelines to local authorities.
“What we see here is very good national guidelines,” he said. “The challenge we are seeing is the cascading of those in a decentralized system to regional, provincial, and local government units.”
As of Aug. 27, the DOH confirmed 516 or 68.98 percent of the 748 samples sequenced were confirmed to be carriers of the more virulent Delta variant.
The Beta variant accounted for 10.83 percent, while the Alpha variant was found in 9.76 percent of the samples
Duterte’s directives came as the Philippines logged 22,366 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, an all-time high and more than 3,000 over the previous record.
For now, Metro Manila and other areas in the country will remain under a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), the second strictest community quarantine status, until Sept. 7 to address the increasing hospital bed occupancy and to enable the local government units to ramp up their vaccination rollout, Duterte said.
The President also reminded Filipinos to continue heeding the government’s advice to wear face masks, observe regular hand washing, and follow strict social distancing to protect themselves against COVID-19.
Duterte likewise renewed his call for Filipinos to grab the opportunity to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
As of Aug. 29, around 33,099,392 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered nationwide, based on the presentation made by NTF Against Covid-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr.
Around 13,784,681 people have already been fully vaccinated, while some 19,317,711 people have already received the first dose.
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has already directed LGUs whose jurisdictions have a community transmission of COVID-19 to implement localized lockdowns.
There were 13,827 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, bringing the total number of infections to 1,989,857.
The DOH said the relatively low number of infections reported Tuesday was due to lower laboratory output on Sunday.
There were 118 new COVID-related deaths, bringing the death toll from the disease to 33,448.
Total recoveries rose to 1,810,847 after 16,759 more patients recovered from the disease.
There were 145,562, of which 95.9 percent are mild, 1.4 percent are asymptomatic, 1.1 percent are severe, and 0.6 percent are in critical condition.
Vergeire said new COVID-19 cases could peak in the mid- September if the same pattern for the increases earlier this year holds.
