There is no need to reimpose the mandatory use of face masks, Department of Health officer-in-charge Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Tuesday.
“We already recommended to the Office of the President, based on agreements coming from IATF discussions, that we don’t need to bring back the mandates,” said Vergeire, who recommends wearing masks even if they are not required.
In a media briefing, Vergerie also told the public to learn to adjust to the presence of the virus.
“Our policies do not need to be back and forth. We all need to help each other so that we can overcome this situation,” she said.
Vergerie related that the DOH and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases have already submitted their proposals to the President on the use of face mask.
She noted that cases will increase and decrease in our country because the virus is here.
She said COVID-19 infections, which have been slowing increasing, will not disappear.
“The virus will mutate and produce variants every now and then,” she said.
Nonetheless, she said the public should know how to protect themselves and their family — by choosing to wear a mask when going to high-risk places, especially if they are unvaccinated, immunocompromised, senior citizens, or pregnant.
She also pointed out the the current spike in COVID-19 infections does not compare to the numbers recorded during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
She underscored the need to raise the level of our risk tolerance to COVID-19.
“This increase in cases did not translate to more hospital admissions, and it did not translate to more severe and critical cases and even deaths,” she added.
She said the health utilization rate remains at low risk because of the wall of immunity due to vaccination.
As of April 30, the Department of Health recorded 5,875 active COVID-19 cases from a total of 4,093,421 cases. A total of 4,021,102 recoveries and 66,444 deaths were logged by the health department.
At present, Metro Manila is still under Alert Level 1, the lowest of the Alert Level System adopted by the government during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country’s daily average of new COVID-19 cases increased by 42 percent from April 24 to 30.
In its case bulletin on Tuesday, the Department of Health recorded 637 daily infections, which is higher than the 450 cases logged between April 17 and 23.
In the last week of April, a total of 4,456 new cases were logged, up from the 3,148 recorded the previous week.
The tally of severe and critical infections also rose to 351 from the previous 345 during the same week.
Only 15 percent or 303 out of the 2,021 intensive care unit (ICU) beds are in use, while 18.1 percent or 3,163 of 17,480 non-ICU beds are used.
At least 78,443,972, or 100.4 percent of the country’s target population of 78,100,578, have been vaccinated against COVID-19, including 82.16 percent of 8,721,357 senior citizens, as of March 19.
A total of 23,811,248 have received booster shots out of the fully vaccinated population.
To date, the country has logged more than 4.08 million coronavirus cases and more than 66,444 deaths since January 2020.