Raffin

New cases yesterday 330.
According to ABS-CBN the second lowest total this year.
Maybe a good sign but the weekend effect is a factor and since the change in DOH data output we do not know about the number of cases being withheld.

Deaths 131
Active 42,835, down 651

Location detail:

NCR down substantially at 84, 25.5% of all cases.
Manila at 22, QC 14.

The CL region up 1 and 4A down by only 4 cases.
In 4A Cavite down 16 to 13, Laguna the same at 12 and Rizal up 8 to 20.

For the two main Visayan regions WV down 6 and CV up 3.

SOCCSKSARGEN region up 7 to 20.

All other cities with small numbers.

Raffin

New cases yesterday: 387
Deaths 15
Active 41,846, down 989

Location detail:

NCR cases up 72 to 156, that's just over 40% of all cases. All of its 6 biggest cities with more cases, though none of them with a large increase.

Both CL and 4A regions about the same as the day before. Although for the province of Cavite up 15 to 28.
The same for the Visayan regions.

Again other cities showing no significant case numbers. Five had 0,1 or 2 cases.

So generally low numbers but the fly (or bluebottle!) in the ointment is the NCR, showing an increase even with reduced weekend testing. Reports from the next few days will really confirm whether there is an uptick in progress there. I will look soon at some recent NCR test centre positivities and see how they compare with the national figure.

DOH weekly report

For their last week they report a 24% fall in cases over their previous week.
My fall was 18% over the previous calendar week (in my report I mistakenly said 7%).

Severe and Critical 758 (805 for the previous week).
New admissions in that category 0 (1 )
Deaths 752 (655)

Hospital data looking good but deaths not. I will be showing some more statistics on Philippine deaths soon. Let's just say they are puzzling for now.

Raffin

Philippines Excess Deaths 2021

The bar chart here is from the PSA. so fairly reliable data:


Excess deaths actual minus expected, based on recent years.

I can't give a chart to show it but it seems there were almost no excess deaths during 2020.

Something obviously unusual happened in 2021 to cause the large, and getting larger, disparity between excess deaths and covid deaths last year.

Note: The covid death numbers used here are from the PSA, not the lower ones from the DOH.

Here is a link to an article which explores all this further:

https://supersally.substack.com/p/th...nfirm-aefi?s=r

Raffin

Yesterday's new cases: 246
The Sunday test number given was just over 35k individual tests. There were 861 positives but only 246 of them were announced. So over 600 cases were withheld. A positivity rate of 2.5% for the day. Interesting that the average rate for the past week was lower at 2.2%. More difficult now to monitor positivity but it is a useful general indicator of virus prevalence and also enables the calculation of the case backlog held by the DOH. Up to the time when they stopped publishing the data daily case backlog was of the order of several thousands. But from a rough calculation it looks to me that backlog has fallen somewhat over the last fortnight.

Deaths: 8
Active: 41,185, down 661

NCR 89 cases and a lower 36.2% of all cases. Only Caloocan City had more cases, just one. Manila reported only 4 cases.

The CL region down 6 to 24, 4A was down 14 to 33. In the provinces Bulacan was up 5 to 13, Cavite down 13 to 15. Rizal unchanged at 11. Laguna reported zero cases.

The NCR together with CL and 4A with 59% of all cases.

WV down 9 to 24, CV down 25 to 8.

In Mindanao the SOCCSKSARGEN region up 5 to 16.

Very small numbers yesterday in all the other cities I follow.

Raffin

Yesterday's new cases: 312
Deaths: 87
Active: 40,412, down 773

Location detail:

NCR added 24 over the day before to 113, maintaining its share at 36.2%. Five of its 6 largest cities added cases. Manila went to 20. QC doubled to 25.

The CL region was down slightly and region 4A went up slightly.

In the Visayas CV was up 8 at 16, WV also up 8 to 32.

In Mindanao the SOCCSKSARGEN region added 12 to 28, its highest report this week so far.

GenSan City had 6 more cases to 15.

Report of local study on diabetes and covid:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/30/...ients-diabetic

Raffin

The ONS have looked at the relative risk of death post vaccination for firstly all-cause deaths post vaccination., secondly cardiac related. The top bar is the one to concentrate on.




Basically vaccination makes no difference to the relative risk, 12-29 years.

Dr John Campbell looks at this towards the end of his latest video on the UKs Omicron surge.

Now England 1 in 16 people with the virus, Scotland 1 in 11.

Raffin

Yesterday's new cases: 327
Deaths 134
Active 39,315, down 944

Location detail:

The NCR maintaining a 36% share of national cases for the third day running, with 118 cases, up 5.
Manila notable with 14 more to 34. Otherwise small changes in the other cities, except QC down 8 to 17.

Regions CL and 4A both up by several cases. Cavite up 12 to 20.

The WV and CV regions likewise.

In Mindanao both the Davao and Zamboanga regions up to their highest for the week so far. But only to 14 and 12 cases.

No significant case numbers in other cities to report ......except perhaps Iligan City had no cases for the third day this week. On the other two days just one case each.

A list of areas for Alert Levels 1 & 2 up to April 15:

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/tops...15-2022/story/

Asian new cases for March 30:

Raffin

Yesterday 29 more cases at 356
Deaths 39
Active 38,320, down 995

Location detail:

NCR up only 1 to 119 and a lower 33.4% of all cases. Four of my big cities lower, one the same and only QC with a few more cases. Unusually yesterday only just over half its cases came from its 6 largest cities.

The CL and 4A regions were both up, the latter by 15 to 62. Rizal 12 more to 19.

In the VIsayas WV had 17 less, CV 10 more cases to 34.

In Mindanao NM, Davao and SOCCSK each had a few more cases.

Again, very small numbers reported from all the other cities I am tracking.

Raffin

Yesterday cases up 23 to 373
Deaths 26
Active 37,115, down 1,205

Location detail

NCR up 30 to 149 and a higher 40% of all cases, second highest share of the week. Caloocan City highest for nearly two weeks at 20. Manila up 11 to 30.
Will look at the trend in the weekly report but it seems that the NCR numbers are not likely to go down to the very low figures as we are seeing in other cities any time soon The public here not aware of this since the DOH recently drastically reduced the coverage of their data reports..

Around the NCR CL up 17 to 47, 4A down 19 to 43. Only Bulacan up a few cases to 14. Cavite, Laguna and Rizal provinces all down by a few cases.

In the Visayas WV up 17 to 35, CV down 16 to 18.
IloIlo City at 11 cases, highest for the week.

Weekly report following later today.

Raffin

Weekly report:

Last week a 21% fall on the previous week. Compared to that week's 18% fall (using figure corrected on March 29) on the week before.

The NCR had an 18% fall, compared to a small increase of 2% for the previous week.
So now not too far off the national fall. Four of its biggest cities fell by between 7 and 55%, but Manila added cases at 4% and Taguig had a 0% change over the previous week.

The CL region fell by 10%, 4A by 20%.
Cavite province fell by 38%, Laguna by 28% and Bulacan by 9%.
But Rizal province was 21% up on the previous week.

Both the main Visayan regions had about 30% less cases.

All except one Mindanao region fell on a weekly basis;
eg NM by 47%, Zamboanga by 42% and Davao by 38%.
But SOCCSKSARGEN had a 4% increase.

All the cities I am tracking had good sized falls except Bacolod with only 7 less cases and Baguio and Gen Santos cities, which each had small increases in cases over the previous week.

Raffin

Yesterday's cases: 690, 317 over the day before.
Deaths 19
Active 35,967, down 1,148

Location detail:

NCR more than doubled over the day before to 332, a much higher 48% of all cases.
All of my 6 largest cities had more cases...Manila 12, QC 39, Paranaque 22 . Their total of cases nearly doubled over the previous day. Meaning that the other 10 cities together had greater increases.
Test numbers nationally were down to around 18k two days ago, so this increase may be due to backlog. If the start of an NCR uptick that will become apparent in the coming week.

Region CL up 13 to 60, 4A up 48 to 91, 9% and 13% of total cases. Cavite province up 25 to 43.
So together with the NCR 70% of all cases yesterday from these 3 largest regions.

Small increases in the Visayan regions.

In Mindanao the Zamboanga, NM and Davao regions each had a few more cases. The latter up 13 to 21.

Vaccinations

The government nervous about the slow roll out of boosters. But as they are only at around 10% of the population and still only 66M fully vaccinated are they really going to bar a large percentage of the population from establishments?

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/04/02/...establishments

Dr J Campbell with his latest UK update:


The UK now well into a large second Omicron surge with variant BA.2. The first with BA.1 earlier in the year. But did the Philippines really miss out a BA.1 surge and just have a mild BA.2? I'm a bit suspicious about that, because of the relatively small number of cases and the absence of any recent genomic data. Concerning if we are now going to get a true BA.2 surge.

Gazza-d

XE could be the next surge. It's become pretty clear now that the vaccines are not preventing you from catching covid, but thankfully are still keeping people out of hospital.

Raffin

Much lower weekend testing gave only 276 new cases.
Deaths 22
Active 34,799, down 1,168

Location data

NCR 82 cases and its share of the national total dropped to 30%. All of the 6 cities with substantially less.
Regions CL and 4A also with substantially less cases.
The three regions together with a lower 58% of all cases.

All other regions reported either very small numbers or substantially less cases except SOCCSKSARGEN with 5 more to 16.

The latest DOH weekly report

Cases 2,679 (2,726 for the week before) 2% fall. My "week" is different and gave a 21% fall.
Deaths 329 (752)
Serious and Critical: 692 (758)
1 new admission (0)
National ICU utilization; 16.5% (15.1%)

New Variant Omicron XE

Earlier this year the Philippines, according to their genomic surveillance at the time, was BA.2 rather than BA.1 dominant.. Although in Europe BA.1 was dominant at the time in most countries. But genomic sampling is low here and there must be some doubt about that. I have already said that no report has been issued since the end of January to confirm and the outbreak was only moderate in scale.
Assuming for now it is true how did it come about when BA.2 was dominant only in Denmark at the time and had a lesser presence in other countries than BA.1, that the Philippines became dominant with BA.2?
My explanation is that maybe it was the result of chance OFW movement at the time. Now foreign tourist numbers are up and they will combine with incoming OFW travel. So if the recent history is correct my point is that it is difficult to predict which variants will make it here. Even if they become dominant all over Europe, as XE might.

Gazza-d

If BA2 is dominant throughout the rest of the world which it appears to be I can't see the Philippines bucking the trend. XE is supposedly 10% more transmissible then BA2 so it's only a matter of time, unless it's supplanted by another variant like happened to BA1.

Raffin

It's a matter of timing, G. Also of truth.

The Philippines claimed to have a BA.2 surge from early January. At that time Denmark's BA.2 surge was well underway. We can believe Denmark as they have excellent genomic surveillance. BA.2 became dominant in the UK in mid February. Here they just said that at the end of January it was "the majority" of the 618 Omicron sample cases. This was elaborated on later to say it had been found in most regions and especially in the NCR and around. From this limited evidence we became known as a dominant BA.2 country along with Denmark, the only really sure example then. We even had a mention in that regard from Dr J Campbell.

So if that is correct we didn't get a BA.1 surge when many other countries were getting it. We got BA.2 when it was nowhere near dominant in most countries. So something unusual happened. Maybe related to OFW entry? In which case assuming a dominant variant, like BA.1 was earlier this year, will always definitely get here is not borne out from recent history.

Alternatively this is all a cover up from the DOH and we really had a modest BA.1 surge. As I keep saying no new genomic data has come out for over 2 months. The last DOH statement was on March 24. All it contained was a repeat of the January genomic data.

If we really had a BA.1 surge then we are open to BA.2 before XE. Although there is some cross immunity between the Omicron sub-lineages.