The Department of Health (DOH) is “prepared for the worst case scenario” after the COVID-19 status of Metro Manila and 38 other areas was lowered to Alert Level 1, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Wednesday.
“Before we decided to de-escalate, we made an analysis of the capacity of the health care system of the country, regionally and locally,” Duque told ANC’s Headstart.
“What we have observed during the worst of the surges, the Delta, we had high health care utilization and ICU bed utilization rate. Severe and critical cases were extraordinarily high but we managed it,” he said.
The government has a transition plan into the new normal, which will be “finished hopefully mid-next week,” Duque said.
“The virus is here to stay and we’ll have to learn to live with it. The question is will there be no surges in the future? No we cannot say that. There can still be surges but are we ready to manage [them],” he said.
Duque touted the country’s low number of deaths when asked for comment on the Philippines’ ranking in the Bloomberg COVID resilience study, which climbed to 50th from 53rd.
The Philippines logged 866 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the lowest so far this year, bringing the total case count to 3,663,920, the DOH reported.
The positivity rate was at 4.7 percent, based on test results of samples from 23,738 people on Feb. 28.
There were 53 new fatalities reported, bringing the COVID-19 death toll to 56,504.
The DOH also reported 1,622 new recoveries, bringing the total number of recoveries to 3,556,589.
There were 50,827 active cases, of which 474 were asymptomatic; 45,862 were mild; 2,776 were moderate; 1,417 were severe; and 298 were critical.
Nationwide, 25 percent of ICU beds, 23 percent of isolation beds, 14 percent of ward beds, and 13 percent of ventilators, are in use.
In Metro Manila, 24 percent of ICU beds, 24 percent of isolation beds, 22 percent of ward beds, and 15 percent of ventilators, are in use.
Presidential candidate and Senator Panfilo Lacson on Tuesday had asked the DOH about its transition plan as part of his push for the Philippines to prepare for the shift from a pandemic to an endemic state.
As part of this transition, Duque said they already have a process for reviewing pricing for COVID-19 tests and would consider putting a cap on them.
“Those are what I would call the low-hanging fruits, that we should really provide our people with more affordable testing without sacrificing the quality of the results. It’s important that accuracy is on top of mind,” Duque said.
Duque added that they would also encourage local government units (LGUs) to follow the DOH in providing COVID-19 care kits to those infected with the virus in their respective areas.
On Tuesday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said all areas in the country must be under Alert Level 1 in order to reach the “new normal.”
Vergeire, during a media forum, said placing an area under the loosest alert should consider other quantifiable measures such as case trends, utilization rate in hospitals and vaccination rate.
“For us to enter into our next level for the new normal, all areas in our country need to be at Alert Level 1, meaning you can translate that into quantifiable measures,” she said.
Over 63 million Filipinos are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, exactly a year since the Philippine government started its vaccine rollout.
Of the total of 135,747,294 vaccine doses administered nationwide, 68,808,944 individuals have received their first dose, while 10,214,164 have received their booster shots after reaching the three to six month requirement.
The government is eyeing to fully vaccinate 77 million Filipinos against COVID-19 by the end of March, and 90 million by the time President Rodrigo Duterte steps down from office on June 30, 2022.
