DOH sees end of pandemic but says virus will stay

DEPARTMENT of Health (DOH) officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said on Friday, September 16, 2022, they are also seeing the end of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic in the country.

“In the Philippines, if you look at it, I personally, and even the Department feels that we are seeing what could be the end to it,” she said in a press briefing.

But Vergeire reminded the public that the virus will stay.

She reiterated the need to continuously increase the country’s wall of immunity against Covid-19, especially through vaccination.

“Expectedly, it will still cause outbreaks every now and then. Expectedly, it will still cause one to two deaths or some deaths every now and then,” Vergeire said.

Build immunity

Earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the end of the Covid-19 pandemic is already “in sight,” citing the significant drop of newly reported Covid-19 cases.

It said the world should step up in implementing protocols against Covid-19 and “seize the opportunity.”

“If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty,” the WHO said.

“What we need to do, strengthen our system, strengthen the immunity of the population, make our facilities ready so that pag dumating ‘yang punto na ‘yan lahat tayo prepared. Wala tayong pangangamba. Tayo po ay protektado,” she added.

From September 5 to 11, the DOH recorded a 10 percent drop in the daily average cases nationwide as compared to the week prior.

The country currently has a total of 24,843 active Covid-19 cases.

Vergeire said the National Capital Region (NCR) reverted back to moderate risk classification with a 16.4 percent positivity rate over the past week.

She said the slight increase in positivity rate in Metro Manila cannot yet be attributed to the lifting of the mandatory wearing of masks policy in open spaces.

“We can’t attribute the rise in cases to the mask mandate outdoors, it will take us one to two weeks to analyze its effects. What we can say is mobility went up since face-to-face classes (started),” she said in Tagalog.

Subvariants

The DOH on Friday reported 165 additional Covid-19 Omicron subvariant cases, majority of which are BA.5.

Based on the latest genome sequencing results, there were 163 additional BA.5 cases and two additional BA.4 cases detected among the samples.

Among the additional BA.5 cases, 151 were from Davao Region, six from Soccsksargen, two from Caraga, and one each from Western Visayas, Central Visayas, Bangsamoro and Metro Manila.

For the new BA.4 cases, both were found in Davao Region.

Aside from the Omicron sub-variant cases, the report showed that there were also four Delta variant cases detected.

All four Delta cases were from Davao Region, said the DOH report.

The DOH said the latest genome sequencing run involved 216 samples.