Tuesdays will always deliver some good news – lower new cases.
Today was different, and one cannot help but think – did they hold back the data yesterday or the previous days because of the SONA of the President?
Let’s look at the data for July 25 where a little more than 30,000 tests were done. And where the positivity rate was 13.2%. With the few tests, how could you arrive at 7,186 new cases?
So yes, there are more than 7,000 new cases, the active cases are more than 56,000 and it will be interesting to find out if the Department of Health will upload the Data Drop tomorrow, because they did not do it today (as of this writing).
With 72 new deaths reported, the case fatality ratio for outcomes is at 1.81%.
While NCR continued the lead, regions outside of NCR, in particular Central Visayas, CALBARZON, Central Luzon, Ilocos Region, Northern Mindanao and Davao Region saw more than 500 cases today. As to whether the data are based on a single day test result, most likely not. It is highly likely that some of the cases were attributed to delayed reporting due to whatever reason.
The province of Cebu marched on with 904 new cases, with Ilocos Norte and Davao del Sur in second and third, respectively.
Among LGUs, it was a different story as Cebu City took the lead. Three key cities reported more than or close to 350 cases each – CEBU CITY, DAVAO CITY, AND QUEZON CITY. Nine LGUs in the top twenty had triple digits. Six of 17 LGUs in NCR were among the tope 20 cities with most cases for the day.
OCTA MONITORING REPORT
While the rise in cases due to the Delta Variant is not proprietary to the Philippines or Asian nations, we need to learn from the experience of countries that had this variant eventually dominate the serotype circulating in the community. It is understandable that the concern is on how badly hit the economic sector is with never ending lockdowns. We need to balance the health risks on healthcare with economy.
The Health Agency and IATF need to consider using self-test antigen kits as screening tools for exposures and contact tracing and government should financially support those who test positive with free PCR testing.
The Rt is up at 1.11 nationally and 1.33 in the NCR.
During the first and second surges, NCR was the main driver of the cases. As we see a rise in cases, short of calling it a possible surge, there are multiple LGUs driving the increasing numbers. Western Visayas has not seen a significant decline in cases for the past months and still remains as one of the biggest contributors to the daily cases. This, as Cebu province tops the list of provinces pouring in more cases.
And as cases are now on an upswing, from Aparri to Jolo, it’s anyone’s guess how this will play out with a country where its sprawling archipelago is the perfect picture for leaky borders and where mobility will be difficult to control.
Relative Joy 