Despite new cases rise, PH remains low risk for Covid-19

Despite increase in the number of new infections, all regions in the country remain under low-risk classification for Covid-19.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online media forum Thursday, the country logged 8,248 new cases from June 30 to July 6 with an average of 1,178 cases per day.

She noted the figure is somehow similar to the average during the last week of February until the first week of March at 1,194 cases per day.

Vergeire said that “for the National Capital Region (NCR), “there are 550 cases per day, which continues to show sharp increase starting middle of May 2022, and among the remaining areas, the rest of Luzon, the NCR Plus areas, Visayas continue to have sharp increases but they are lower than 250 cases per day, while in Mindanao it is 50 cases per day.” 

She added that most of the regions have less than one per 100,000 population average daily attack rate, but the NCR, Calabarzon, and Western Visayas have an average daily attack rate of one to 3.4 cases per 100,000 population.

“With these, the national positivity rate has increased to 7.4 percent, similar to the rates we’ve had in late February this year,” Vergeire said, adding that the severe and critical cases among the hospital admissions are at 635 and their count remains lower than 1,000 since March this year.

A decrease in the number of severe and critical admissions was seen in the recent days. The national Covid-19 beds utilization remains low risk at 21% despite an increase of two percentage points compared to last week’s rate.

Vergeire said intensive care unit utilization also remains at low risk with 17% of the total 22,659 dedicated beds occupied.