The country has logged its second death due to the more infectious Delta variant, but the Department of Health assured the public there is no community transmission yet despite recording 11 local cases.
“In the new batch of detected Delta variant cases, a 58-year-old female has died. She exhibited symptoms five days after her medical consultation. When she arrived at the emergency room, her situation had already deteriorated and she passed away on the same day,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.
The first Delta variant death, she said, involved a 63-year-old seafarer from M/V Athens Bridge.
Meanwhile, Vergeire said the Health department is still confirming whether one of two reported Delta variant cases in Antique also passed away.
“We are verifying if a case from Antique had apparently died. We are getting the complete information so that we can inform the public also. The one who has allegedly died is not yet verified, so we still have only two cases [of Delta variant deaths] in our list,” she said.
Tagged as cases no. 34 and 35, both patients in Antique have no history of travel outside the country. The Western Visayas Center for Health Development earlier said Case No. 34 passed away on May 31.
On Friday, the DOH reported 16 new Delta variant cases, of which 11 are considered as local cases—two in Metro Manila, six in Region 10, 2 in Region 6, and one tested in Metro Manila but has an address in Region 3.
Vergeire said there is no longer any active case among the 35 patients detected with the Delta strain.
“Two have died, and the remaining 33 have all recovered,” she said.
The Health department, however, is conducting “intensive contact tracing” among all individuals who tested positive.
“We are also looking at doing genome sequencing in those areas with surges to get the whole picture [of the Delta variant transmission],” Vergeire said.
Meanwhile, the OCTA Research Group said Mariveles, Lapu-Lapu City, and Cebu City had the highest COVID-19 infection rates this past week.
Data from July 10 to July 16 showed that in Mariveles, Bataan, the number of infections increased to 57 from 23 in the previous week for a “very high” infection rate of 1.85 and “very high” 40.66 incidence rate.