The Philippines logged 7,103 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the highest in a single day since the pandemic began, bringing total infections to 648,066, the Department of Health (DOH) reported.
The previous record was at 6,958 on Aug. 10, 2020.
An official of the World Health Organization (WHO) said other countries, too, were experiencing similar surges.
In an online press conference, WHO Representative to the Philippines Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said one of the possible causes of the rise in COVID-19 infections was “vaccine optimism,” a phenomenon that was observed to occur in countries where the rollout of vaccines for COVID-19 has begun.
“The arrival of the vaccines and the optimism that the vaccines brought has resulted in the decreased compliance in public health protocols. At a community level, it has opened room for the virus transmission to increase,” Abeyasinghe said.
A similar spike in new infections, he said, is occurring in developed countries that have been administering COVID-19 vaccines to its population for several months, such as the United States and France.
He said the recent focus on planning for a vaccine rollout at the local government level may also have resulted in lapses in the implementation of minimum public health standards such as wearing face masks, shields, and observing physical distancing.
“Because there was the optimism that the vaccines will come, that the economy will bounce back. But this infection has demonstrated again that we have to be very careful,” Abeyasinghe said.
Another possible reason, he added, was the increased transmissibility of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19.
To date, these variants of concern that have been detected in the country include the B.1.1.7 variant originally found in the United Kingdom, the B.1.351 variant identified in South Africa, and the P.1 variant identified in Brazil.
He said the P.3 variant, first detected in the Philippines, is still being studied, adding the local variant of the virus has not been observed to have “any increase in transmissibility.”
Thirteen new fatalities brought the death toll from COVID-19 yesterday to 12,900, which was 1.99 percent of total cases.
The DOH also reported that 390 persons recently recovered, bringing the total recoveries to 561,902, which is 86.7 percent of the total.
That left 73,264 active cases, the highest for this year, representing 11.3 percent of total infections.
Of the active cases, 93.9 percent are mild; 3.3 percent are asymptomatic; 1 percent are critical; 1.1 percent are severe; and 0.59 percent are moderate.
Meanwhile, Public Works Secretary Mark Villar said half of the beds in Metro Manila’s quarantine facilities for COVID-19 cases are occupied.
He said this compared with the national average of 16 percent occupancy.
The OCTA Research Group on Friday urged the government to ensure consistency in the implementation of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, and to expedite vaccine rollout.
The call came as the country battled a resurgence in coronavirus infections.
“Our strategies are quite good but it is likely that we are not enforcing [them] consistently at all, most likely at the lower levels of governance,” OCTA Research fellow Benjamin Vallejo Jr. said in an online briefing.
“This would involve more contact tracing, more testing, and if we have to [impose a] lockdown, whether it is at the national level or regional level or sort of granular [approach], or even if this is voluntary, this has to be informed by scientific advice, especially from epidemiologists and the medical doctors,” Vallejo said.
Vallejo also urged the government to speed up its immunization program.
Earlier, OCTA urged the government to prioritize the vaccination rollout in the National Capital Region (NCR), which is the epicenter of COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
They said the virus could not spread if about 7 million or 8 million Metro Manila residents, as well as those from nearby regions such as Calabarzon and Central Luzon, have already been vaccinated.
In a radio interview, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the authorities would “borrow” vaccines from health facilities in the provinces for use in Metro Manila hospitals that recored a high number of COVID-19 patients.
Duque said the vaccines will only be borrowed from hospitals with minimal reported uptake.
“I received a report that there are hospitals with low uptake of vaccines,” he said, noting that some like AstraZeneca would expire in three months.
“Why not borrow [the vaccines] first and bring it where it is needed? We have been doing this before,” Duque added.
Duque said this was no different from health personnel being reassigned to hospitals that are facing emergency situations and in dire need of additional manpower.
“We really do this. It’s part of management intervention,” he said.
On Friday, the Palace said President Rodrigo Duterte approved the recommendation to use all available AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines in the country as the first doses for health care workers, instead of holding some in reserve for second shots.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque made the announcement days after Duque and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. made the recommendation to protect as many medical frontliners as possible against the deadly disease.
Roque said the government will use all the available 525,600 AstraZeneca vaccines donated by the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility as first doses instead of setting aside some doses for the second shots.
The vaccine is administered in two doses, with the interval between doses at 12 weeks or three months.
On Monday, Duque and Galvez recommended to President Duterte to allow the use of all AstraZeneca vaccines as first-dose shots for health care workers. The President, however, was worried that the second dose might not arrive on time.
But Duque assured the President that the interval between the two doses of AstraZeneca vaccines was 12 weeks. He also stressed the need to use the vaccines because of their relatively short shelf life of three months.
Also on Friday, the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives slammed what it described as the government’s “slow and inefficient” pandemic response.
“With the country still mainly relying on donated COVID vaccines, despite the billions of pesos already borrowed for the inoculation program, ordinary Filipinos then cannot be blamed [for] judging the Duterte administration’s pandemic response as criminally inept, incompetent and an agony for the people,” the group said in joint statement read at a news conference.
The bloc composed of Reps. Carlos Isagani Zarate, Ferdinand Gaite and Eufemia Cullamat of Bayan Muna; Arlene Brosas of Gabriela; and France Castro of ACT Teachers, cited the need for Congress to review RA 11525 or the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act of 2021 for its inability to address “the actual situation of the ongoing problematic COVID vaccination in the country.”