Disjointed DoH reporting on PH pandemic situation

Then, it started reporting a daily rise in cases; first, in single digits and then, in the hundreds and thousands.

The public has been led to believe that what is driving the current surge of Covid cases is the dreaded Omicron variant.

Yet, in her unsettling daily reports, Health Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire does not say and cannot say how many are infected with Omicron.

She does not say either that the bulk of new infections are probably still being caused by the older Delta variant.

The DoH appears to be unaware of major developments abroad that point to Covid-19 becoming an endemic problem.

On Tuesday, January 11, Vergerie reported that the DoH has registered 28,007 new infections, raising the caseload to 3,026,473.

Then, she rolled out the fact that the Philippines has reported more than 3 million coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic as the country struggles to control outbreaks driven by the Omicron variant.

Daily cases have reached unprecedented highs in January, following increased mobility during the holiday season and the detection of local cases of the hyper-transmissible Omicron variant.

The repeated reference to the Omicron variant underscores the point that Omicron is is the culprit behind the surge of cases.

If this is so, where are the Omicron cases? How many are they?

Is it possible that Tuesday’s tally of 28,000 new cases includes also hundreds or thousands of persons infected by the older Covid variants?

The DoH must clarify and explain its own data and understanding of the pandemic situation.

Or are the 28,000 all Omicron cases?

Better communication is vital because there is news from the UK and the US that Covid-19 is now trending toward becoming an endemic problem like the common cold.

Endemic, less severe

Naveen Athrappully reported on a highly positive forecast of Covid-19 trending toward becoming an endemic problem (The Epoch Times, Jan.10, 2022). She wrote:

“A British doctor has forecast Covid-19 evolving to become less severe and endemic, and said the highly transmissible but milder Omicron variant is the beginning of this process.

“’The thing that might happen in the future is you may see the emergence of a new variant that is less severe, and ultimately, in the long term, what happens is Covid becomes endemic, and you have a less severe version. It’s very similar to the common cold that we’ve lived with for many years,’ Dr. Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modeling (Spi-M) and a University of Warwick professor, told Times Radio on Saturday.

“Tildesley said that the latest variant is different from the previous Delta strain, but that the time for normalcy has not been reached. ‘We’re not quite there yet, but possibly Omicron is the first ray of light there that suggests that may happen in the longer term. It is, of course, much more transmissible than Delta was, which is concerning, but much less severe.’

“Natural immunity has been found to offer better protection against the virus than the vaccines, according to an Israeli study involving around 5.7 million people. The theory is that a highly transmissible version of the virus would infect people rapidly but leave behind a more resistant population.

“Tildesley added: ‘Hopefully, as we move more towards the spring and we see the back of Omicron, we can get more interrelationships of living with Covid as an endemic disease and protecting the vulnerable. Any variant that does emerge which is less severe, ultimately, in the longer term, is where we want to be.’

“Tildesley pointed to the number of cases, which was flat-lining in the UK’s capital city London, and lower hospital admissions, as encouraging signs that the situation may be starting to turn around.

“On January 9, the number of new cases in England was 121,228 with a seven-day average of 140,256, which is an increase of over 200 percent from December 14, when the spike began and the seven-day average was 45,489.

“Similarly, in the United States there was an increase of more than 450 percent from December 14, when the sevenday average was 119,379, and 668,497 on January 7, while the number of deaths recorded a much smaller change from an average of 1,143 on December 14 to 1,513 on January 7.

“’On the slightly more positive side, so it doesn’t sound all doom and gloom, what we are seeing from hospital admissions is that stays in hospital do appear to be on average shorter, which is good news, symptoms appear to be a little bit milder, so this is what we are seeing consistently with the Omicron variant,’ Tildesley added.

“Of course, Dr.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, does not like the idea of terming the Omicron variant ‘mild.’ He likes the idea of the world being kept on edge by Covid for there lies WHO’s relevance.”

Omicron forcing a Covid reset

Sarah Zhang filed a report in the Atlantic on Jan. 10, 2022, that details how Omicron is forcing governments to rethink Covid. She wrote:

“When Delta swept across the United States last year, the extremely transmissible and deadlier variant threw us into pandemic limbo. The virus remained a danger mostly to unvaccinated people, but they largely wanted to move on. Vaccinated people also largely wanted to move on. The virus did not want to move on. So we got stuck in a deadly rut, and more Americans died of Covid-19 in 2021 than in 2020. Now Omicron is sweeping across state after state — even highly vaccinated ones — and new cases are shooting up and up. The virus is still deadliest to the unvaccinated, but the sheer number of mostly mild infections in the vaccinated is shocking us out of that postDelta stasis. To deal with this extremely transmissible but now milder variant, we are in the middle of a Covid reset.

“Already, the CDC has shortened the isolation period for vaccinated people. Breakthrough infections are becoming routine. And Anthony Fauci is pointing to hospitalizations, rather than cases, as a measure of Omicron’s true impact because many infections are now mild breakthroughs.

“By infecting so many people so quickly, Omicron is also speeding us toward an endemic future where everyone left has some immunity, so the coronavirus is eventually less deadly. But in the short term, Omicron as an accelerant is dangerous. The fastest path to endemicity is not the best path. The US still has too many unvaccinated and undervaccinated people, and cases that might have been spread out over months are now being compressed into weeks.

“Compressing all those mild cases into weeks has its own toll: Too many healthcare workers are falling sick at the same time, exacerbating hospitals’ ongoing staffing shortages. Schools, airlines, subways and businesses are finding their workers out sick with Omicron too. There may be no preemptive shutdowns, but there will be unpredictable cancellations. ‘It’s going to be a messy few weeks. I don’t think there’s any way around it,’ says Joseph Allen, a professor of public health at Harvard.

“The fact that we will eventually end up with endemic Covid has not changed. And the fact that people cannot expect to avoid the virus forever in an endemic scenario has not changed. Omicron is now forcing us to look squarely at the reality that people can get and spread Covid even when vaccinated. The problem is, we’re doing it in crisis mode.

“With so many people getting Covid, our mindset toward the virus is changing. Breakthrough infections are the new normal. For a while, in certain highly vaccinated bubbles at least, people who got breakthrough infections racked their brains about what they did “wrong.” But now — excuse the hyperbole — everyone has Covid. And if you don’t, you probably know someone who does. Even the most careful people are getting sick…

“Even if Covid can’t be avoided forever, there are good reasons to try to avoid getting or passing it on over the next several weeks. Better treatments for Omicron are on the horizon, Syra Madad, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard, told me. Pfizer’s very effective pill has just been approved and authorized by the FDA, but supplies are short. In a few months, the outlook will get better for individual people at serious risk from Covid.”

My point is to stress that it is time for the DoH to include endemic Covid as a key part of its messaging and communications.

If it cannot pinpoint the Omicron infections, it should stop scaring our people with talk of runaway infections. At least it should acknowledge that it knows little about Omicron today, and that the threat of Omicron is much more mild than publicized.