AN INFECTIOUS disease expert yesterday said the Philippines is seeing an “artificial” decrease in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases as seen in the weekly case bulletin of the Department of Health (DOH).
In a televised public briefing, Dr. Rontgene Solante said he agrees with the DOH in saying that the current numbers do not reflect the actual case count in the country as other cases have remained undetected.
“There is a small artificial decrease in the cases,” said Solante, as he noted that “a lot are using the antigen tests, so the testing rate is affected. In a way, we cannot see the true numbers of COVID cases.”
Only the results of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests are reflected in the DOH weekly case advisory.
Solante also pointed out that not all symptomatic individuals are required to get tested for COVID-19.
“We only test the vulnerable (individuals), whom we need to treat if found positive for COVID-19 because they are at high risk of becoming severe,” he said.
Based on the latest DOH COVID-19 case bulletin, the country has an average of only 145 cases daily for the period of January 30 to February 5. This is 16 percent lower than cases reported from January 23 to 29.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire has warned the public against becoming complacent against COVID-19, admitting that the agency is “not able to capture all cases through our reports.”
Meanwhile, Solante said the Philippines is unlikely to end up like the United States despite the detection of the first case of the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 in the country in the last genome sequencing held from January 30 to February 3, 2023.
Solante said he does not see the so called “Kraken” subvariant as causing a massive surge in COVID-19 cases in the Philippines.
“I don’t think it will cause a significant spike in the increase in cases,” he said, citing high coverage of the primary COVID-19 vaccines.
In addition, he said there are also a high number of Filipinos that have been infected with COVID-19.
“I believe that our population’s wall of immunity is still high as many have received their primary vaccine series plus many have been exposed to COVID-19. Therefore, that gives you what we call the hybrid type of immunity,” Solante said.
He, however, said that there is a possibility that the Kraken would be one of the more dominant subvariants in the Philippines.
It must be noted that the XBB.1.5 subvariant accounted for nearly 28 percent of COVID cases in the US last January.
“I think it will be (dominant), especially now that the WHO report said that among the top three fast rising variants or subvariants of Omicron is XBB.1.5,” he said.
