So we’ve been treading the 7,000 mark over the past few days. Today, the Health Agency reports 7,228 new cases for close to 44,000 tests done last June 4 with a 13.2% positivity rate. In the weekly summary update, one will see the U turn the Philippines took in the past two weeks. In spite of the more than 7,372 recoveries for the day, the total number of active cases is at 4.7% (almost 60K).
New deaths reported were 166 today putting the case fatality ratio fixed at 1.81 percent.
As of yesterday, there were 45,703 new cases reported this week and an uptick in death count at 1,008 new deaths for the week May 30 – June 5, 2021.
CALABARZON took over the regional lead today as the only region reporting four digits with 1,046 new cases. NCR came in second and had one of its lowest percentage over-all total contribution at 13% (957) to total cases for today. The surprise? Western Visayas – which had moved to third place with 768 new cases. All regions continued to report triple digit numbers.
Every city in the NCR had less than 200 cases, with only Quezon City and Manila reporting triple digits. Two cities and one municipality even reported single digit cases. Seven of 17 LGUs in NCR were among the top twenty cities with most cases in the Philippines for the day.
The province of Negros Occidental took over the lead among the top provinces, while Iloilo province came in fourth.
Bacolod City had the most cases among all cities, followed by Davao City, for the day. Other cities outside of NCR that were among the top ten included: Iloilo City, Cagayan de Oro and Dasmariñas City (Cavite).
The week in review now shows the U turn the country took the past two weeks. Notice how the deaths also took an upward trajectory. It is interesting to note the parallelism for the uptick in cases during the first and second surge. The first surge last August 2020 lasted more more than 2 months. The NCR and areas around NCR were the primary contributors to these cases. When the cases began to decline by end of September, there was an increase in cases that lasted close to a month. That second rise was from the regions outside of NCR. The second surge which began the last week of February 2021 was again attributed to the NCR plus bubble. Another lockdown (ECQ followed by MECQ and heightened GCQ) for 4 months now pushed the cases down. Similar to the first surge, we were never able to bring the cases low enough as mobility allowed the cases to migrate to the regions. The U turn, is attributed to the rise of cases outside of NCR plus bubble.
Testing capacity remained a paltry around 40-50K per day. It is lowest during Sundays and Mondays. Because most of the testing centers are located in the NCR plus bubble and in major urban areas of the country, it is understandable that we have lower tests conducted because the regions are not that capacitated. This is why the positivity rate takes the same U turn as the cases. We are not testing enough in the regions outside of NCR because of lack of testing centers in these regions.
TTIQ – Testing, Tracing, Isolating and Quarantining – remain the four important cornerstones for addressing the pandemic. Including variants and surges. We need to maximize at strengthening these four pillars. While the government emphasizes the duty of each citizen to mask up, keep a distance, observe hand washing, improve ventilation and keep away from crowded venues, it is a good reminder for government to observe that it is their duty to ensure TTIQ is sustained and consistent across all LGUs in the country. The vaccines are only ONE PART of the solution. We cannot keep waiting for the donations and purchases to arrive. TTIQ is the obligation of government to its people.
Relative Joy 