Active COVID-19 infections in Mindanao have surpassed those in Metro Manila and the rest of Luzon, the Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday.
As of June 2, there were 11,391 active COVID-19 cases in Mindanao, against 10,174 cases in Metro Manila, the DOH said.
Cagayan and Central Luzon "have the highest cases and fastest incline," but a spike in new cases was also observed in Davao City and the Zamboanga region, which is most likely due to more contagious foreign variants in the country and the non-observance of basic health protocols like the proper wearing of face masks and frequent hand washing, said DOH Epidemiology Bureau Director Alethea De Guzman.
“If we are talking about the speed in the rise in cases, the Mindanao cases as a whole are higher than the cases we are seeing now in Luzon and NCR,” De Guzman said in Filipino.
In Davao City, Mayor Sarah Duterte asked the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to place the city under a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) due to the surge of COVID-19 cases in the city.
Failure to adhere to health standards was behind the rise in cases, De Guzman said.
“Some people think it’s tiring. It’s been a year, do I still want to wear a face mask?” she added. “Do I still want to wear a face shield?”
Earlier this week, at least 40 employees from various departments of the Davao City Hall and Sangguniang Panglungsod (SP) tested positive for the coronavirus.
Most of them worked on the first floor of the building.
De Guzman said despite the rise in cases, the DOH was not recommending a regional lockdown.
"We need to be rational in our imposition of heightened community restrictions… Mobility restriction limits contact but mobility restriction isn’t the only answer,” she said.
"We can decrease the contact rate by not being part of super spreader events. We want to lessen the duration by which one person could continually infect others," she said.
The DOH has advised local government units to impose granular lockdowns in villages or areas where there are a lot of symptomatic patients, and to immediately quarantine those who are showing symptoms of the disease.
"If we can reduce to five days the time of detection to the time of isolation, we can reduce by a third the number of cases," De Guzman said.
Davao City earlier said it would ban non-essential government events in the highly-urbanized economic hub in Mindanao as active COVID-19 cases breached the 1,000 mark last week.
Meanwhile, Eastern Visayas reported 276 new coronavirus infections, the region’s highest daily tally since the pandemic began, official data showed Thursday.
Confirmed cases there had risen to 21,452, with 324 deaths.
The DOH said Leyte province logged the highest number of new infections at 96, followed by Northern Samar with 27 new COVID-19 cases, and Southern Leyte and Samar, each recording 21.
Among cities, Tacloban recorded 44 new confirmed cases while Ormoc had 32, the DOH said.
The DOH expressed alarm at the uptick in cases and attributed it to complacency in following minimum health standards.
"Please avoid super-spreader events. We observe in social media posts that there are a lot of people almost everywhere. This is not the time to go out," said Dr. Exuperia Sabalberino, director of DOH-Region 8.
"Please protect your families. We don’t know what’s behind us. Many are asymptomatic carriers in the region. Our positivity rate is high,” Sabalberino said.
The DOH also confirmed the presence of "variants of concern" in Eastern Visayas, such as the B.1.1.7 or UK variant.
Amid the spike in COVID-19 cases, the major COVID-19 referral hospitals in the region have reached their full capacity.
The Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center can no longer accommodate COVID-19 patients.
As of June 1, there were 40 pending referrals in the hospital.
The Philippines on Thursday logged 7,217 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 1,247,899, as four laboratories were not able to submit their data on time, the DOH said.
This marks the ninth consecutive day where more than 5,000 cases were recorded.
The COVID-19 death toll rose to 21,357 with 199 new fatalities.
The DOH also announced that total recoveries climbed to 1,170,752 with 3,483 new ones.
The number of active cases in the country increased to 55,790. Of these, 93.6 percent were mild, 2 percent were asymptomatic, 1.8 percent were severe, 1.4 percent were critical, and 1.27 percent were moderate.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Thursday said it was not time yet to lift the policy requiring the wearing of face shields in public areas, after Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso renewed appeals for the national government to stop requiring their use.
“Mayor Isko’s proposal would be okay if we had a wide vaccination coverage,” Duque told GMA News. “We can’t drop the face shield policy for now when our two-dose vaccination coverage is a little over 2 percent due to still inadequate vaccine supply.”
Duque has repeatedly stressed that the use of face shields is backed by science, citing a study published in leading international medical journal The Lancet.
“There are many scientific studies showing that face shields in combination with face masks and more than 1 meter social distancing provide a greater than 95 percent protection,” he said.
The Philippines has only vaccinated over 3.9 million people as of May 30, still far from the government’s target of inoculating 58 million individuals in COVID-19 hotspots by November.
The inter-agency COVID-19 task force made the use of face shields mandatory only in December last year.
Both local and international experts have advised against the use of face shields as a substitute for face masks. A US study showed that shields alone cannot prevent the spread of the virus.
