5,000 COVID-19 Cases Logged In Phl In A Day, And This Is Not Fake News

The Philippines recorded 5,000 new COVID-19 cases in a day on Saturday, March 13, the highest since an increase in COVID-19 transmission was detected in some parts of Metro Manila beginning February.

Based on the case bulletin of the Department of Health (DOH), the additional infections bring to 616,611 the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.

The last time the DOH recorded COVID-19 cases reaching the 5,000 mark was on Aug. 26 last year at 5,277 cases.

Based on data, there are now 56,679 active cases, representing 9.2 percent of the total cases.

Death toll rose to 12,766 after 72 more patients succumbed to the virus.

On the other hand, 281 COVID-19 patients recovered, raising the number of recoveries to 547,166.

Despite this, DOH records showed that 54 percent of the over 1,900 intensive care unit beds in COVID-19 wards are still available while 62 percent of 13,500 isolation beds are unoccupied.

On the other hand, 71 percent of 6,000 ward beds are vacant while 73 percent of 2,000 ventilators are not in use.

In August last year, doctors belonging to the Health Professionals Alliance Against COVID-19 (HPAAC) called for a “timeout” by asking President Duterte to impose stricter quarantine restrictions in Metro Manila and other areas due to the increase in transmission.

Duterte relented and placed the National Capital Region, Cavite Laguna, Bulacan and Rizal to modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) from Aug. 4 to 18 after convening an emergency meeting with his Cabinet members to discuss the concerns of medical frontliners who called for a lockdown in Mega Manila to prevent the collapse of the health system.

HPAAC made the call as many hospitals were already being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients then. Healthcare workers were also getting exhausted while many of them getting infected already.

On Friday, March 12, there was a total of 4,578 new COVID-19 cases from 3,749 on Thursday, March 11. It was on Sept. 14, 2020 when the DOH recorded 4,699 new cases of COVID-19.

Not fake news

The OCTA Research group earlier projected that COVID-19 cases in the country could hit 5,000 to 6,000 a day, but by the end of the month.

On Friday, professor Guido David told “Sa Totoo Lang” on One PH that cases could hit 5,000 daily by next week. David pointed out they had to revise the projections as the COVID-19 reproduction rate is now at 1.9 from 1.6. He admitted it was fearsome to see the cases reaching 5,000 daily.

David said they were being criticized for supposedly peddling fake news as they made the projections. But it turned out the cases are even rising more quickly at present.

“That’s not fake news, the data are coming from the DOH,” David said.

He underscored that transmission is happening more rapidly and more than what is expected due new factors driving the surge in cases.

In a report on March 7, the group said a surge was already underway in some local government units in the National Capital Region.

OCTA noted cases are spreading “very quickly in a short period” and that while verification through genome sequencing is still needed, the group expressed belief that the spike in Metro Manila infections may have been caused by the new and more transmissible variants, particularly those that were first detected in the United Kingdom and in South Africa.

“The original strain does not spread this quickly considering the health guidelines in place,” it stressed.

It also attributed the upward trend to increased mobility among the people as the country further reopened the economy as well as to “poor or lax border controls, sparse testing, and leaky quarantines.”