Tuesdays and Wednesdays regularly report lower cases. As mentioned before, there is a 2 days lag in the announcement of the Health Agency on new cases. Today they announced 6,414 new cases. However, the DOH also states that the reason why the numbers are low, is that the number of samples submitted for testing was also fewer last April 5, 2021.
The bad news is the announcement of deaths. From 1.7 percent case fatality rate, we now jump to 1.72 percent as 242 new deaths were reported today, bringing the total deaths past 14,000.
While the positivity rate is a bit lower at 18.2 percent, this is still relatively high for the country.
The healthcare capacity remains overwhelmed with ICU beds at 79 percent and isolation beds at 70 percent – both past the critical mark.
The growth in number of cases considerably declined in the National Capital Region, as reported by the OCTA group in their weekly Monitoring Update.
The reproduction number in the NCR decreased to 1.43 for the week of March 31 – April 6, while the reproduction number in the Philippines was up at 1.45. The average number of new COVID-19 cases reported per day in the NCR was 5,146 over the past week, with a one week growth rate of just 3 percent. During this period, the NCR is averaging 24,000 tests per day, 17 percent lower than the previous weeks average. This means that we are not seeing the complete picture with respect to growth rate and trends, and once data come in this week, there will be corrections in the findings.
OCTA Research, Philippine COVID-19 Update, April 7, 2021
The top ten regions/provinces in the country with new cases are provided in the table below. While new cases have decreased significantly in Cebu, cases in Isabela and Benguet have increased significantly. The ICU capacity in various regions and provinces in the top 10 have breached the critical level capacity (70 percent) set by the Health Agency.
Among the top 20 cities with highest cases in the Philippines, notice that many LGUs are seeing a slowing down in the growth rate. The highest growth rate in cases has shifted to some LGUs which have never seen significant rise of cases. These are: Muntinlupa City (48 percent) with the highest growth rate in all LGUs in the country followed by Dasmariñas City in Cavite (42 percent). ICU and bed occupancy are mostly past 80 percent in 13 of the 20 top cities.
NCR accounted for half the total cases for today with 3,211 cases. Together with CALABARZON (1,448), Central Luzon (607), and Cagayan Valley (446), these four regions hauled 84.4 percent of the cases for the day. There were 34 cases with unknown locations on a regional level, while 29 were ROFs.
In the National Capital Region, some of the LGUs were seeing lower cases today because of the lower samples tested in the country in general and in Mega Manila in particular. Thirteen of 17 LGUs in NCR were among the top twenty cities with most cases for the day.
On a provincial level, Cavite is back on top, with Laguna, Isabela, and Rizal with more than 300 but less than 400 cases.
Relative Joy 