Raffin

Yesterday a lower 225 cases. Mainly the weekend effect. But positivity is now down to an average of 1.6% last week from 1.9% the week before.

Deaths 5
I have no confidence in the daily death figures, especially lately.

Active; 3,629, down 1,170

Location data:

The NCR down 1 to 81 so a higher 36% of all cases. Manila up 2 to 16, QC doubled to 22.

The CL and 4A regions both substantially down.

So again the NCR behaving differently.

Cases in the WV region increased 4 to 21.

Otherwise low numbers in all other regions. The Bicol region 0 cases.

All other cities I track had a maximum of 5 cases.

Raffin

Yesterday 40 more cases nationwide to 265.
Deaths 52
Active 32,463, down 1,166
Falls in active cases over 1,00 a day lately.

Location data:

The NCR total fell by 3 to 78 and a lower 29% of all cases.
Five of its 6 largest cities with less cases.

Region CL up 7 to 27, 4A up 17 to 49. Cavite province up 9 to 19.
Laguna and Rizal provinces each up slightly.

The WV and CV regions both up slightly.

NM up 21 to 25, the highest this week..
The other Mindanao regions all up slightly.
Other cities: again small numbers of cases.

Mandatory Vaccination

Supported by the Health Secretary partly because of the number of vaccines nearing their use by date. But needs to be passed in the Senate first.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/tops...vax-law/story/

Raffin

New cases yesterday up by a few to 278
Deaths data splurge: 169
Active 31,472, down 991

Location detail:

The NCR up 22 to 100, second highest this week so far. Five of its 6 largest cities with a few more cases.
The NCR back up to 36% of all cases.

Region 4A down 19 to 30, CL up 1 to 28.

The WV region up 5 to 31.

NM cases dropped to 8, otherwise no significant changes in Mindanao regions.
BARMM has reported zero cases two days running.

The 8 other cities I track all reported between 0 (Baguio and Ilagan cities ) and 4 cases only.

The OCTA group head/spokesman predicting a significant case increase over the next few weeks. Certainly the NCR figures, with two days to go this week, may well be up on last week's. He's not a virologist or doctor, he's an economist. Well, they can be good statisticians and he points to the pandemic history so far here where the country has not been able to maintain a constant low case number for long. His mention of new variants is therefore pure speculation. But to be fair. given the poor surveillance, that also applies to all health experts here.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/tops..._picks&order=1

Gazza-d

The big problem here, and elsewhere for that matter, but especially here, people see the virus going away and think oh well why should I bother to get vaccinated. It's very difficult to keep people's eyes on the ball when the perceived threat is very low.

Raffin

Yes, low threat due to low prevalence here, even allowing for under-reporting. Also the good level of mask wearing, social distancing...even though lower than earlier this year might be a factor also.

But does it matter?

1. Vaccine effectiveness against catching Omicron around 30%.
2. Quickly waning effectiveness from booster against catching , 6 weeks only to hardly any from a recent Israeli study.
3. Although there's still good protection against severe illness and death from studies, including that one, maybe people are understanding that Omicron is usually milder than previous variants so that's not so important to them.

I'm not suggesting the general public are mostly up on 1,2 and 3, just that more general vaccination may not do them much good.

Raffin

Yesterday cases up 22 to 290.
Might be consistent with around 1.5% positivity but what is happening with backlog is not known. However one would think that should be now be much less with the much lower number of cases.
Deaths 69
Active 30,527, down 945

Location data:

Again the NCR different to other regions in adding 15 cases over the day before to 115, up to 40% of all cases. Most of the increasing cities not in the 6 most populous.

Small increases in both the CL and 4A regions.

WV down a little, CV up 6 to 20.

The 9 other cities I am tracking reported from 1 to 9 cases only.

From Worldometer yesterday. Ordered by new cases.


Four Asian countries plus Australia.
Thailand and Australia not yet clearly peaked, the others falling.

Raffin

Yesterday 12 more cases nationally at 302.
Deaths 70
Active 29,440. down 1,087

Location data:

The NCR down 4 to have 37% of all cases .Only Manila with more, up only 3 to 19.
Region CL down a little, 4A up a little.

WV and CV regions down by 8 and 6.

Standing out in Mindanao was the Davao region, up 23 to 31. Ten more than its highest daily number of 21 last Sunday.
Davao City the source with 19 cases, after only 1 the day before. The highest since 13 last Sunday.
Just a local backlog being announced or something more? We shall see.

Eight "other city" case numbers between 0 and 8.

Weekly update later.

Raffin

Just 5 cases less last week for the country at 2,326. The previous week a 21% fall.
So the Health Under Secretary right when she said last week that cases were "plateauing". The report of her words got buried amongst all the election news.

What she didn't say is what is happening with NCR cases. Here up 9% to 899.
Big differences between the 6 largest cities...Pasig up by 84%, though the number was just 59. Paranaque, QC and Caloocan were also up by moderate numbers, in that descending order. Manila's went down by 11%, Taguig's by 21%.

Cagayan's doubled, but only to 89. CL's were up 12% but 4A's were exactly the same over last week's.
Bulacan's numbers were up 19%. Cavite's stayed exactly constant but Laguna's were up by 64%, but only to 82.
Rizal's went down by 48% to 48.

WV cases fell by 14%, CV's by 18%.

In Mindanao NM region cases increased by 66% to 68 for the week. Davao region's increased by 38% to 91.
Davao City's were up by 50%, but only to 46 for the week.
The number of SOCCSKSARGEN and Zamboanga region cases fell significantly.

For the other 8 cities I am tracking four had less cases and four had the same. A range of 2 - 35 cases.

Raffin

Yesterday 277 cases, down 25 on the day before. Coming from around a lower 18k tests.
Deaths 39
Active: 28,380, down 1,060

Location detail:

The NCR down 9 at 102 and at 37% of all cases. Caloocan City up 8 to 20. Manila down 6 to 13.

The CL region up a little, 4A up 13 to 52. But the increase not from Cavite, Laguna or Rizal provinces as two were down and one stayed the same.

WV down a few cases and CV constant.

No significant changes to reports from Mindanao.

Case numbers from the 9 cities I track between 0 and 8.
Davao City only 1 case.

Raffin

Cases announced yesterday slightly down at 273 on the day before.
Deaths 39
Active 28,380. down 1,027
Falls consistent lately at around 1,000 a day.

Location detail

NCR up 9 to 111 and a higher 41% of all cases.
Manila. Paranaque and QC each up by a few cases.
CL and 4A each up slightly. Laguna province down a little but Cavite up 15 to 28.

WV down by 8, CV up by 6 cases.

The Davao region up by 8 cases to 15.
Davao City with 10 cases.

DOH weekly report for April 4-10.

New cases 1,906 (2,679) Down 29%
Looks good mainly due to the stand out high 690 cases announced on April 3 being counted in their previous week. My weekly report on Sunday included those cases and had almost no decline.
Deaths: 428 (329)
New Severe and Critical: 0 Patients 707 (692)..some rise after falling for 5 weeks.
ICU %: 18.4 (16.5)

Deaths tailback:

So far this month: 31


Total: 428 deaths announced April 4-10.

So we have 72 from 2020, 164 from 2021 and this year 192.

The latest DOH deaths chart by date of occurrence:


Large backlog numbers went to the case rising period of the Delta wave August-October 2021.

Raffin

Yesterday low Sunday testing gave 68 less cases at 205.
Bad weather in parts of the Visayas and Mindanao also likely to have contributed to that.
And we're entering the Easter holiday period.
Death 1
Active 26,256, down.1,097

Location data:

NCR at 76 and lower 37% of all cases. Three of the biggest cities up, 3 down. Small changes except Paranaque City up to 10.
Regions CL and 4A both down substantially.

WV up 8 to 18, CV down 11 to 8.

Small changes in the Mindanao regions.

The 9 cities I track all between 0 and 6 cases.


Deaths in the pandemic so far:

Below are the covid deaths compared for all regions for two periods of time.
The first 12 months of the pandemic starting March 2020 and the second 12 months after that up to now.
Data from Super Sally's Newsletter April 11.
https://supersally.substack.com/

The average multiple of increase 3.5, with some very large increases in the CAR, Cagayan and Ilocos regions.
The coincidence is that the Philippines vaccine roll out started at the beginning of the second 12 month period.
The second 12 month period also coincided with the Delta variant wave. In her article Super Sally staes it was milder than the Alpha wave but I looked for commentary on that and there are conflicting views.

Nevertheless, something to consider is the link, if any, from all this with the vaccination roll out?
Also to note, as I posted yesterday, the DOH are still adding deaths for the last two years.

Some regional graphs are also interesting:


Note that for the CAR the Omicron deaths are close to those of Delta! Strange as we know Omicron did not lead to as much severe disease.


Note: It looks like treatment in the NCR improved greatly at the end of the first year. Then there are two peaks for Delta deaths. Ilocos, Central Luzon and Calabarzon also showing the same thing. Why?


Cebu had a sharper delayed spike later in 2021 than other regions as there was considerable vaccine hesitancy there. Then a strange deaths spike occurred during one week in October 2021. A coincidence that at that time there was a big push on vaccination in Cebu, with around 6,000 prisoners a main focus?

Gazza-d

I'm struggling with that table. Are the 2020 and 2021 columns the number of deaths if so just for those two years the number of covid deaths were 68,259 excluding 2022. The DOH report 59,778. Also Omicron may be less severe but it's only 30% less likely to cause severe disease in the unvaccinated.

Raffin

Yes, there is a discrepancy of 8,481 over the two years. The author says she got her figures from the original DOH source, the data drop, which you download. I've never bothered to do that so not sure whether the data there is different in some ways from that presented in their Tracker site and to the media. It may be that they include some extra deaths for regions there, maybe not fully confirmed as covid related but don't want to add them into the tracker data? The PSA earlier this year counted 31k of those for the pandemic so far. Cases where covid was the likely cause of death but no test. So maybe some of those included?

About the CAR, well it seems to have just under 60% fully vaccinated, not too bad. But it had the highest Omicron peak of all the regions compared with Delta. I recall it was a region with some of the earliest reports of the BA.2 variant so maybe that made things worse? As you might have read I'm sceptical about the general prevalence of BA.2 here but the CAR has been highlighted by the DOH for that variant. Medical facilities there? As of now, its "safe", according to the DOH.

Raffin

....to add on the CAR it really must have been an Omicron, probably BA.2, hotspot earlier this year. Omicron can kill and the numbers infected were high:


The CAR cases.



Baguio cases.

For comparison:


NCR cases also higher than Delta ..for a shorter time...but deaths much lower. Medical facilities are good there.


WV Omicron cases also higher in relation to Delta than in the CAR...but deaths lower too. Are medical facilities that good there?

So not very explainable by cases. Some other factor was at work in the CAR. A quick search finds no news on abnormal vaccination events there..

Raffin

An increase yesterday of only 28 cases to 233. Testing only at 18k and now truly in the Easter holiday period.
Deaths 113
Active 25,134, down 1,122

Location detail:

NCR lower to 71 and 31% of all cases. Four cities down. Paranaque up 9 to 13.
Region CL up 16 to 34, the highest so far this week. 4A down a little to 29.

WV up 12 to 30. CV constant at 8.

No significant movements in MIndanao regions.

Case numbers in my 9 other cities ranging from 0 to 9.

Weekly case positivity:

Seems to have stopped falling.

At April 3: 1.6%
At April 10: 1.6%

Philippines Excess Deaths for 2021

Now estimated by the PSA at 232,660 over 2019.
There were none for 2020.
A large number and one that may increase as data for the last 3 months of 202 still not all in.

Total deaths in 2021 38% more that in 2019.

The PSA looks at death certificates (something the DOH does not do) and has came out with preliminary 2021 Covid deaths confirmed by tests of 74,008 plus 31,715 where it was likely due to covid but no test. So nearly 106k.
This is consistent as back in early February they estimated that for the pandemic up to October 2021 there were 103k, about double the DOH figure. Much more data has come in since then.
The IHME at Washington State Uni in the US published a worldwide study on excess deaths, which I reported briefly on here a few weeks ago. Their estimate for Philippines excess deaths was 184k.

This chart from https://supersally.substack.com/
April 12 newsletter.


Allowing for covid well over 100k excess deaths. Remember this is still preliminary data for 2021. We then have those caused by delays in diagnosis, treatment not available etc but would that make up the difference? In 2020 there were no excess deaths and the Philippines vaccination programme started its roll out in 2021. That may be significant and should be looked into along with events like the "Cebu spike" and the unusual death curves in the Delta surge showing two peaks in some regions.
But here it seems that in cases where a government department does nothing the only body to undertake investigations is the Senate. Not now sitting and subject to change in the election. You could see some sort of enquiry into this Achilles Heel of the pandemic taking place if certain candidates win the Presidency in May. But with others not! As with many other things here in the past the general public will just want to move on from the pandemic and most politicians and government officials will be only too happy to do that.