Raffin

A better level of submission from labs yesterday. The DOH has been trying to improve on the number and accuracy of the details many of them have been entering on its data site. It gave them a time out to comply and is "naming and shaming" them in its daily bulletin. Yesterday 105 out of 117 reported. But 12 are still listed as not complying. It's unclear yet what effect all this has had on submissions this week. The DOH has said be prepared for an increase in positive cases. Though the figures yesterday were actually quite moderate:

3,176 cases nationwide, but only 2,793 from August 27 on (383 from March to August 26!)

Of the recent cases 40% were from NCR, 26.1% Calabarzon.

Deaths were at 70, 36 of those in NCR. About 1,700 patients are at severe/critical.
But compare with Indonesia's 100 reported deaths. They're in tenth position worldwide on September 8 for daily deaths.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/video/news/...ories-catch-up

Raffin

Another 3,821 cases announced yesterday from the 105 labs who reported. The DOH still naming the labs not submitting. Whether that is because they are not complying with the DOH's new standards or just for operational reasons we don't know. Nearly all of them now seem to be provincial. A good change is that recently more tests being done. Recently about 41k individuals from the previous average of around 35k.

Of the 3,821 cases only 3,277 came after Aug 28. The NCR owned 53% of them......an increase on previous days. With the latest weekly positivity rate there at 12.2% it's hardly surprising that the NCR keeps producing that many new cases.

Deaths at 80 nationwide, but 24 were from May to July. In the NCR there were 35 reported, but 10 of those were from May to July.

The latest 7 day moving average charts:




Last, the Philippines close to overtaking Germany. Italy is at 19th position with 283k cases. Not shown here but notable is that the Philippines, even allowing for some reduction being applied this coming weekend, has a relatively high number of active cases at nearly 59k, compared to Germany with 17k, Italy 36k. Significantly larger even allowing for definition differences,

Bealinehx

I wonder if Philippines will catch up to France with 8000+ cases yesterday!

Raffin

Maybe not as both France and Spain showing a major surge. But looks like we are on either a bumpy plateau or a bumpy moderate lowering?

Last 2 weeks cases/100,000 population in Europe:

Spain 263
France 135
UK 40
Italy 32
Germany 21

Raffin

Yesterday just over 4k new cases nationwide announced, but a third of those were those whose onset of illness was before August 28 and stretched back to March.

For the NCR the situation was the same...1,813 cases announced but only 1,196 are recent, Aug 29 to Sep 11. That's 43% of the nationwide recent cases.

So for the NCR the Aug 1-28 backlog alone was 31% of yesterday's announced cases.

Calabarzon owned 23% of total recent cases with Cavite having the greatest number.

Improvements with testing and lab reporting were reported. The number of individuals tested got up to 50k a day on Wednesday. Just 6 labs, not 12 as the DOH previously reported, didn't report on Sep 10. But then yesterday the DOH made no report on the lab submission level!

Nationwide deaths were at 42, with 15 from the NCR. Half of the latter a backlog from Aug to March!

There are a number of factors here which lead to one thinking the outbreak is far worse than shown by the official data...eg low testing, high positivity rates, under -reporting. But the large backlogs in reporting make it look worse...bad for decision making and the PR aspect of how the pandemic is being handled.




The latest daily German increase was about 1,600 so it won't be long before we overtake them.

After that Italy is in view (now at 284k cases) if things don't improve here soon.......but only if Italy manages to control their recent uptick in cases. Overtaking Italy would be bad from a PR point of view, given that Italy was an international pandemic epicenter earlier this year.

Indonesia is well behind the Philippines in reported cases but our ASEAN neighbour was placed ninth in yesterday's global newly announced deaths table. Looks like their health system is even worse than the one here. Their case fatality rate is now at 4%, the Philippines' is at 1.6%. Only on deaths per million does it do better...31 compared to the Philippines at 37.

Raffin

New cases yesterday nearly reaching 5k nationwide. The DOH has warned to expect exceptionally high numbers following the data disruption a few days ago . However, since 82% yesterday are recent we should be concerned about this number of new infections. For the NCR there was more backlog as recent cases were 77% of the total, giving 2,025 recent cases. Only one lab did not report. Sounds much better but the DOH do not ever say what percentage of their testing capacity they report on any day.

The number of deaths reported nationwide was unusually high at 186. But 126 of these were recovered cases now found out to have died! We have seen this daily adjustment before on a much smaller scale. Between June 12 and August 21 ABS-CBN report that 309 recoveries were re-classified as deaths (see link below). The NCR contributed 100 of yesterday's deaths....51 from July back to April. This high one day figure will raise eyebrows around the world and most who see it will not know the main reason. But probably Ok as long as the DOH doesn't make a habit of announcing so many on one day.

Germany just had 822 more infections yesterday, so we get much closer in the league of total cases.

Indonesia continued to report a high number of deaths...106 more.

Still a bit too early to say whether the Philippines curve is really flattening or fattening.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/09/12/...t-to-be-deaths

Gazza-d

Assuming a similar fatality rate across the world the Philippines is under reporting the number of deaths by half. And adding all these late number from the early days of the pandemic just shows that now the cat is out the bag they were hiding the numbers in the early days.

Bealinehx

"And adding all these late number from the early days of the pandemic just shows that now the cat is out the bag they were hiding the numbers in the early days."
Are you surprised? One of the problems is that local authorities make up their own rules. I really don't think that the severe looking PNP Lt General in charge creates the right atmosphere. I'll touch more on this in a couple of days.
Serious cases worldwide are about 15% and surprisingly the old farts do particularly well. Existing medical conditions and obesity are the killers. The UK has the highest obesity rates in Europe hence a contributing factor to the very high mortality rates attributed to COVID. What can we say about the Land of the Donald huge levels of obesity and diabetes.

Raffin

Getting on for 500 of those succumbing to covid seem to have been recorded as recoveries. An amazing number and there could be more to come. I tend to go along with both of you replying that it is a cover up and agree with you, Bea, about local health authorities. Not wishing to cause panic locally? Or bring down the Manila task force on them? If some of them are doing that you wonder about other statistics.
Whistle blowers don't fare well here and so with a docile media we may never know the real motivation.
On fatality rates I read somewhere that neighbouring Indonesia's is not only high due to their poor health system. It also has one of the highest male smoking rates in the world...a main reason for cardiac disease, hypertension and diabetes.

Gazza-d

And the high smoking rate, cardiac disease, hypertension in the Philippines where 1/3 of the population has diabetes. Oh and the poor health system, say no more.

Raffin

Yesterday added 3,372 cases nationwide with NCR 1,307..a smaller percentage (39) of the total than usual. Backlog in NCR at a lowish 18%. But 10 labs didn't report.
As it was Sunday, the DOH day for mass recovery reporting , 20k recoveries were reported.

Deaths were 79...NCR 23, W Visayas 17, Calabarzon 10. Seven deaths in the NCR occurred in July/Aug, 7 in the W Visayas wee from August. Eight recoveries were deleted and removed from lists....probably another way of quietly saying they were deaths.

Comparing last week with (the week before):

Cases daily average: 3,328 (3,063)
Deaths 72 (53)
R 1.0 (0.87)

So a U turn in cases two weeks after a stricter lockdown lifted. Backlogs do complicate the view but they fell towards the end of last week and if that is maintained it will be easier to see the trend next week.
The deaths number was greatly affected by the surprise 126 recoveries reclassified as deaths.
But the number of those severe and critical keeps rising so we can expect the trend of increasing deaths to continue
We're testing more...the most recent daily figure was over 36k individuals and the nationwide positivity rate is on a gradual downward trend and below 10%. But for the NCR it is certainly still well above that recognised danger level. (figures not available at present) Daily tests above 40k have occurred a few times but we need to raise the average above 40k, even with a decline in positivity.

Another way to look at the situation is the number of Sunday active cases:

13 Sep: 49,277
6 Sep: 48,803

A slight worsening.

Internationally on cases the Philippines briefly overtook Germany, and Italy, presently at 287k+ is in sight this week:



Stop press: Germany came out with 752 more cases so has regained 21st place by a whisker, But the Philippines will certainly regain 21st place tomorrow.
Unfair that Indonesia will not also soon accompany them as they are doing much less testing. One third of the level here in relation to population.

People around the world will see this country above Israel with "only" 155k+ cases at 24th position but now going into a second lockdown. And not far from Iraq, Turkey and Pakistan...countries with a poor reputation for government.

Raffin

New cases yesterday nationwide 4,699, with 87% recent. Fifteen labs not reporting too. For the NCR 1498 with 74% recent. So cases are on the up, although the 26% backlog for NCR may mean the disruption caused by DOH efforts to improve the data is still affecting the numbers there. Another data issue showing today is that 25% of all cases nationally could not be assigned to a region!

The "highlight" of the day was the 259 deaths. Of those 207 (86%) came from July and August. Why so high? Well, the DOH also announced that they have removed 297 recoveries from their lists. The DOH say 253 have died with 44 still ill. The NCR owned 154 deaths...86% occurred in July and August. Then comes Central Visayas with 55 and Calabarzon with 28.

Either this is a major administrative mess up, a cover up...or perhaps a mixture of both. The DOH says the surprise figures are the result of an ongoing checking process. So we must expect more to come. The DOH Under Secretary tried to explain the now over 500 cases in total of this as the result of local delays in recording a death, in which time it can get recorded as a recovery??

As usual not much local reaction to this happening, which would be a major scandal in many countries. The task force is too busy arguing about reducing the distance between public transport passengers by 0.25m! However, these high one day spikes in death figures will certainly alert the media abroad over the next few days.Let's see what they say.

We have now overtaken Germany and Italy, only 23k or so cases ahead, will be next in a few days:



The virus is obviously not under control here, but one of the few metrics the Philippines was doing Ok with was deaths. Compared to Indonesia it was doing a lot better, mainly due to its younger population (average age 10 years less}, But if it can't sort out the covid deaths data soon it will not be seen as internationally credible.

Raffin

Mid September and judging from official statistics the virus continues to spread at a steady rate and every day there are serious questions about the reliability of the data.

Another 3.5k new infections, but with 15 labs not reporting.
Only 690 from the NCR..a very low 19% It's usually 40-50% or so. But then 1,060 today had no known location! In fact between September 2 and 15 a third of cases had no known location!
Backlogs yesterday continued to be small compared with a month ago.....NCR 18%.

The DOH continued its checking of recoveries....of 538 it was found that 2 had died and 536 were still active cases. So yesterday not a huge, mysterious death tally like the day before. But still concerning. If cases got reinfected they should be reported as such. Or were they never recoveries in the first place? More deaths from recoveries turning up seem likely. My guess is that the DOH are going around the country doing these recovery checks ...in some places record keeping is better than others and in a few they may be concealing the true situation.

Deaths yesterday 34, with hardly any backlog. Of those 13 from NCR and 5 Calabarzon.

Expect more soon as there are now over 2,300 patients severe and critical. That's a jump of about 700 on the previous day's figure!! Hardly credible. So are hospitals consistently not reporting patient condition?

Reports of testing also make you wonder.....the latest figures from the start of this week give the number of individuals tested last Sunday at avery low 23k, But on Monday a record 56K.

Seven day average new cases chart up to Sep 14:




The DOH are proud that their estimate of the Reproductive number is just below the borderline value of 1.0, below which the outbreak will eventually cease to spread. But R estimates are based on data from contact tracing, which is acknowledged by health experts to be poor. Also it is a national figure and ideally we need good estimates for the epicenter NCR. The UP group are optimistically claiming it is as low as 0.92:

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...below-1/story/

For positivity we are still at just under 10% nationwide with the NCR probably a few percent above that. Unfortunately the DOH seem to have stopped publishing positivity figures from NCR labs. The UP group are saying 11%, but just two weeks ago it was much higher. The WHO say that an outbreak is under control when positivity is down to 5% consistently.

The Philippines featuring in the top ten in two tables. for Sep 14. As the recent very large death tally was due to a hopefully one off spike I will just show the latest new cases table:

Raffin

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/09/15/...ggest-strength

What? I counted 28 countries in Asia alone who have tested more per million of population than the Philippines. Many with a comparable population size.

Of those there are 6 who currently have total cases greater or just a little less (Israel) than the Philippines.

The best we can say is that testing quantity here has improved lately to 30k to 40k a day. But it needs to be higher as the positive rate is around 10%.

Raffin

Almost the same number of new infections as yesterday, just over 3.5k with 84% recent. Seven labs out of the 126 now operating did not report.
NCR about 1,500 cases...259 of them going back from Aug to March. Calabarzon with just under a thousand cases and 100 or so of them a backlog.

Again a large number of cases, more than a thousand, cannot be tagged regionally. Presumably mostly displaced persons.

Deaths 69 nationwide with 24 NCR and 19 Calabarzon. Again recoveries went to deaths, but "only" 9.

After adjustments for recoveries and deaths active cases now total over 60k.

Testing at a modest 31k recently, with nationwide positivity still around 10%.

So, despite signs of a downward trend late last month cases are now on an upward path again as the economy reopens and people get tired of restrictions. This is illustrated well by a graph of the Reproductive number estimates (R). R is not easy to estimate, especially here, but changes in it lagged by 5 days can be seen to be in step with changes in cases both this month and back in July:


Internationally the Philippines is working it's way up the table of new cases:



Indonesia is on the way to 10.000 deaths as its hospitals are reaching their limits. Isolation and ICU beds full:

https://apnews.com/c07d086268c2ea0241c3a90b876541fa

We're not in that situation at present. But yesterday there were 2,350 severe and critical covid patients, 50 more than the day before. At the start of the month about 1,500. Our death toll, added to by past incorrect data, will continue to compare unfavourably with Indonesia's when the big difference in population is taken into account...Indonesia has two and a half times more people. Deaths per million here are currently at 43, compared with Indonesia at 33.