Raffin

Announced Feb 2 were another 1,583 positive tests, but a high 13 labs did not report. Test results running a backlog of about 600. Positivity 5.6%. Tests coming along 23.7k.
Regional distribution a state secret until Feb 3.
Deaths 67 with 2RDs. Which reminds me that we also lost easily accessible detail on the regional distribution of deaths some time ago.
Case fatality up to 2.06%.
Now 820 patients in severe and the same number in critical condition. Critical exceeding severe, which has usually been reported, always seemed strange to me. An explanation could be that many people avoid hospital here until they are seriously ill?

Cases from Feb 1:

National total 1,658 with 4.4% positivity. Five labs did not report. Backlog of about 600.
Deaths 58.








Iba, Zambales...pop about 50k.

NCR 24.2%, Region 4A 12.7%..so total 36.9% from the two original epicenters.
Cebu, 3 cities and province continuing high numbers.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/02/01/...ome-sequencing

Phils needing to improve genome testing.

Last, the latest national case chart:



One hopes the latest rising trend is soon moderated but experience with covid shows that more often than not once the curve starts to rise it continues for some time.



For deaths some recent flattening of the falling curve. Many of the deaths announced in the last few weeks actually occurred back in July and August.. This can be seen as the chart bars are well above the trend line (calculated from date of announcement) for those months and below after that.

Raffin

Lockdown can now be imposed just about anywhere....judging by Silang Cavite. An area of Cavite with a population of over 200k, but with a built up area with a fraction of that population.


Infections going up by 5.3% for month of January

See more local covid stats at https://covid19stats.ph/stats

Driving past the built up area of Silang on Monday, all entrances to it from the diversion road/by pass were barred to non residents without a "health certificate", that euphemistic term usually meaning a covid test certificate. Something close to it from a doctor anyway. In total the town has about 8 roads to the rest of the municipal area and I assume all of them similarly barred. Having a number of long established useful businesses a town often visited by people from Tagaytay, where there are mainly hotels and restaurants.

Thinking about it it's a lot easier to isolate this sort of place which is off a diversion road than one without a by pass.

The curve above looks bad but infections rose by only 5.3% in January. Elsewhere in Cavite towards Manila Bacoor's rose by 6.8%. The Calabarzon Region rose by 7.8%. The national rise was 10.9%. So why a lockdown like that? It just shows you how much power individual mayors have and something to look out for elsewhere as new infections rise again.

Raffin

Yesterday 1,266 new cases announced. Tests done 24.8k and a positivity of 5.7%. Seven labs not reporting. In the pipeline a low 23.7k tests.
Locations tomorrow.
Deaths 68 with 19 of them RDs.
Severe 755 and Critical 786..yesterday it was 820 each category.

Location detail for Feb 2 cases:


Other Mindanao 14







Central Visayas was top region with 17.2%, followed by NCR at 16.5 and 4A at 15.4. So both gave 31.9% of cases.
NCR had only 6 cities in the top 20.
Cebu and Davao Cities with over 100 cases each.


Not many regions under 5%.


Testing slightly higher than before the holidays, but lower than in September.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/02/03/...ontliners-athl

More additions to the priority list . Under pressure as they won't have enough vaccine for most of the general public for quite a while. More complication for the LGUs.
What does "economic front liners mean"? Then we have the Health Secretary telling LGUs to plan for those in priority groups rejecting vaccination. Sensible but will add further complication and lead to distrust that it is fair.

https://covid19stats.ph/stats
A tip: to find stats quicker for a location google the place with the site name first.

Raffin

Announced yesterday another 1,590 cases. Lately the numbers averaging under 2k, but testing numbers very variable. These came from only 24.7k tests. Positivity at 5.8%. Tests in process a much higher 31.6k.
Areas where positivity lately is under the recognised control level of 5% account for about 20% of the population only.
Areas where positivity is more than 10% for about 15%.
The rest of the population, over 70m, live in areas where recent positivity has been between 5 and 10%.
Yet the daily positivity figures of tests done are steady lately at only around 6%.
Many more cases now being missed as the virus spreads regionally.

Deaths at 55 with another large number of RDs, 41. As the pandemic continues no improvement in the accuracy of data collection of deaths.
Case fatality up at 2.07%.
Severe 754, Critical 787..no change on the day before.

Location detail of cases for Feb 3:

Viewed the GMA evening news bulletin earlier this week. They only gave the national daily case figures announced that day. No recent regional data.










NCR 29.1%, 4A 10.4%..the two added 39.5%. Ten NCR cities in the top 20.
Central Visayas second region to the NCR at 16.1%.

Cebu and Davao del Sur leading provincially and their capital cities too in the urban areas table:


Cebu cases rapid growth lately.



Davao City case growth levelling lately.

Again on regional testing..

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/02/04/...vid-19-alkalde

Twenty percent positivity from the mass testing of the 270 vendors! As with Manila in the earlier days of the pandemic these outdoor workers in Passi were presumably not able to get themselves tested, even if they are showing symptoms. Now some Manila cities offer free testing. Labs have doubled nationwide over the last few months as the virus spreads regionally but most will be private and not affordable by the likes of street vendors.

Silang, Cavite update: I posted about a surprising medium level lockdown on this Cavite market town on Feb 3. Looking at the latest available DOH figures on Covid19 stats the whole area added about 30 cases over the last week, 27 Jan to 2 Feb. Concerning as our local Cavite market town, though with a quarter of Silang's population, added only 2 in the same period, but does it merit such strict controls on entry? It is possible that they have found extra cases on top of those announced, which are yet to be validated by the DOH. But looking at Google results it did a similar thing last year. Then the reason was an outbreak at a PNP training facility on the edge of its area far away from the town. The municipal website useless with its latest news from October 2020.

Raffin

A higher 1,590 new cases recorded yesterday, 6 labs not reporting. Positivity of 5.1% from 27.9k tests. Backlog reported was nearly 500. Tests coming along at a higher 34.3k.

Deaths 61 with a large number of recovery deaths (RDs)...47.
No change in numbers severe/critical....754/788.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/02/05/...late-reporting

So 74% of recent deaths from March to October. That's a big data quality issue. Due to "Data harmonization with the PSA"? A vague explanation which does not address the large number wrongly tagged, often for many months. Only ABS-CBN looking into this area, but even they don't seem to want to fully investigate.

Case locations from Feb 4:










Central Visayas top region with 16% and Cebu Province with the great majority of those. Cebu City with 60% of the province's cases.
Kalinga and Isabela in N. Luzon each with over 100 cases.

NCR 14.1%, 4A 9.2%...the two together a low 23.3%.
Only 6 NCR cities in the top 20 urban areas.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...88Jhofnlly5Orz

Dr John has been on a vitamin D crusade lately. Two studies add more to the case that it plays an important role in covid outcomes and also general immunity.
Likely to be deficient the darker your skin and the less you are exposed to sunlight, with that being much more important than diet. So many urban Filipinos likely to be deficient and to a lesser extent us Expats here if we keep indoors too much.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/02/05/...inside-vehicle

I thought this silly attempt to class the insides of private vehicles as public spaces had gone away months ago but it seems the authoritarian government here has been busy and are bringing it back, Let's see if they get to fining rather than just warning couples in their car for not wearing a mask. I pity the police and other enforcers here. Dark tints will make enforcement even more difficult so I expect they are busy studying bringing in a law on that. The more so given the newly announced child car seat legislation.

Raffin

The DOH reported another 1,941 cases yesterday, 4 labs not submitting. With a nearly 500 backlog positivity at 4.7% from 29.5k tests. Tests coming along 35.6k
Deaths 52 but most of them RDs, many of which could be months old.
Severe cases 755, critical 791. Very little change.

Detail for Feb 5 cases:


Pus other Mindanao 32


Malabon 21, Las Pinas 20





NCR led the regions with a higher than recent 27% of cases and 11 cities in the top 20.
4A had a lower 8.6%, so the two together at 35.6% in line with recent numbers.
Five other regions with more than 100 cases,

Provincially Cebu and IloIlo stand out with both having over100 cases.
Cebu City had a lower than recent 44% of its provincial cases. IloIlo's cases mostly came from Passi and IloIlo cities.

Davao City with an unusually low 25 cases.

The DOH report one case of UK variant from Cebu province. A mild case. No details on travel history. They still say there is no community transmission of the UK variant in the country. Others experts disagree, especially in relation to the recent rapid increases in Cebu.


Cebu province

If the mainstream media could report on Cebu case numbers it might alarm some viewers and that may be one of the reasons behind the DOH's decision to withhold reginal data from daily publication. Cases in Mountain Province are far away and easily contained. But Cebu is more central in the country and with a higher population. But their greatest fear is the UK variant taking hold in Manila.

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/...accine-ph.html

The Russian Sputnik V vaccine had a bad start but peer reviewed data from large scale Moscow trials has been published in The Lancet, and the results are good. Russia has a long cavalier record when it comes to developing vaccines but one thing I read in an article I posted a link to in this thread last year was that they are not mandatory there. I am not so sure about China on that. The Philippines is still in negotiations about getting the Sinovac vaccine, with its worse effectivity compared with Sputnik V, which is possibly also cheaper. Looks like we will have to buy some Sinovac for political reasons, but the Russian option looks much better.

Gazza-d

Yes the Russian vaccine sounds good but I think the big downside is that the two jabs consists of two different vaccines which would take a certain degree of organisation. Not a strong suite in most third world countries.

Raffin

Yesterday 1,790 new cases, 8 labs not reporting. Over 400 backlog of results included. Positivity from 26.1k tests was 5.1%. Tests coming along a higher 32.9k.
Mass recovery day and 11.4k announced.
Deaths at 70 and most were again RDs. It seems that the DOH validation programme is in top gear now after an Xmas lull in finding and correcting these wrongly tagged deaths. Why oh why the fault in the reporting system cannot be fixed by now beats me!


Deaths levelling somewhat lately. The gap between the bars and trend line is due to both late reporting and RDs and shows many recently announced deaths moved back in time.

Case fatality has crept up to 2.08%.
Active cases down to 26,333 from 27,318 a week ago, a fall of 3.6%.
Severe 764 and critical 790. Severe up 10.

Detail for Feb 6 cases:


Plus Zamboanga 19, Bicol 17







NCR 18% and 4A 3% adding to a 31% contribution to national cases. NCR had 8 cities in the top 20.
Central Visayas had well over 300 cases (18% of national cases), most of which came from Cebu with the city giving half of those.
Rizal and Davao del Sur provinces also both over 100.


Cebu City showing rapid case growth this year.

Some excuse if mostly due to the UK variant...otherwise you wonder what sending in the general last year achieved long term? At present the media hamstrung in their reporting by a lack of daily statistics on all regions. The mainstream media can only do an item if some confirmation comes in on the UK variant's presence there and then they have an opportunity to include some statistics.

Over the past week average daily cases up to 1,715 from 1,692.
Reproduction number at 0.99.
Looks not too bad, doing a lot better than Indonesia, but testing here seemingly cannot get to 40k a day and above which it needs to do to find more regional cases.


New cases recently peaked at well over 10k a day. Testing is at half the rate of the Philippines per head.
Taking a markedly different approach to the Philippines Indonesia targeting young people with the Chinese Sinovac vaccine. The country has a somewhat older population than the Philippines.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55620356
Vaccination programme has just started, with under 6k doses done in a country of 280m.

I

Raffin

Yesterday 1,890 new cases announced with 5 labs not reporting results. Positives reported in recent tests were added to by a backlog of nearly 780 results. Positivity 6.1%. Tests coming along at 33.8k.
Deaths 52 with 46 of them RDs. Continuing the recent high numbers of RDs found.
Severe at 756, critical 784, both down a little on the previous day.

Detail from Feb 7 cases:


Plus Bicol 22


Plus Mandaluyong 13




NCR gave 21.2% and 4A 12.6% of cases. Both together 33.8% of national cases.
The NCR with 8 cities in the top 20 urban areas.
Provincially Cebu continues to lead with over 300 cases and over half of them from Cebu City.

Plenty of selective statistics from the Philippines Health Secretary here:

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...million/story/

Most covid statisticians avoid comparing active cases due to widely differing definitions of recovery. On deaths per million notice he is comparing with Europe and the US and not with neighbouring countries...Malaysia 27 per million and Thailand 1, compared to he Philippines with over 100......the country with the youngest population too. Yes Indonesia is worse all round (though quicker on vaccination) but Myanmar is a much less advanced country which is testing at a much lower rate and has larger areas than in the Philippines that are not controlled by the government. And of course the numbers of micro states like Singapore cannot be compared.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/video/news/...-in-manila-doh

No information on contacts....,,.there must be many as he has been in Manila since November. Continuing silence on that from the authorities over the next few days will probably mean the UK variant is starting to circulate in Manila.

Last, the latest national and NCR charts:


National, showing concerning recent case growth from regions away from the NCR and around..


NCR flat

Gazza-d

Something I have noticed and is only an opinion, the South African variant consists of the N501Y mutation plus the E484K mutation. The N501Y mutation is also found in the UK variant. It makes me wonder if N501Y is the initial change which once widely circulated further mutates adding the E484K mutation. What I'm getting at, could the so called UK variant popping up be a natural progression and largely home grown. So in places like the Philippines and for that matter the USA where there is next to no genomic monitoring happening could this account for the sudden uptick in their cases. But because the UK initially identified the mutation will be forever blamed for it. Like the American flu of 1918 introduced to Europe by the troop ships first recorded in the Spanish press.

Raffin

The DOH announced 1,235 cases yesterday, 8 labs did not report, a higher number than of late. Positivity at 6.3% from only 16.4k tests. Tests coming along a bit higher at 21.3k.
Deaths 65 including another large RD list of 59.
Case fatality rate 2.09, getting closer to world average of 2.1 -2.2.
Severe cases 758, critical 788. Little daily change but a lot less in these categories compared to 6 months ago.

Details on Feb 8 cases:


Bicol 27







NCR 23.4% and 4A 9.9% of total cases. The two together 33.3%, one third of national cases.
Central Visayas gave 21.15% with nearly all from Cebu province, and 60% of those from Cebu City.
CAR, where the UK variant is "locally" transmitting adding 141 to its over 12k cases in an area of lower population.
While Davao's number was again over 100, the City was only 47. The increases there moderating recently.

The recent increases in Cebu are of concern and speculation that there may be a variant circulating there has not yet been laid to rest by the DOH.

Dec 24 -30 saw only 30 cases in Cebu City. Then 62 came in the next week. The first week of 2021 saw over 150 and the week before last 851. For the week starting Feb 4 we already see 775 cases with a day to go.

The rapid case rise has led to suspicions that the UK variant was involved as a trademark of it is a slow start then after a short period of time a steep rise. UK total cases rose by 70% in a month late last year as the variant took over. Reports of a case in Cebu, now wrongly located, added to the suspicions, as has the DOH decision to delay the announcement of daily regional figures by one day.
My explanation of all this is just that low testing and/or lax controls in Cebu allowed the increase to occur in the run up to Xmas. The DOH, probably already getting pressure from government on high figures from Davao also started to get it on Cebu, as the province was visited with great publicity last year by high profile members of the IATF and whatever changes they instituted there obviously did not prevent another big rise in cases. Remember the NCR or Mega Manila was not counted by the DOH as a single location in their top 5. So seeing the two main provincial cities every night on the TV with high cases was too much for the government. So they clamped down on announcing the daily top 5 numbers, using the excuse that the public was finding them "confusing".
The thing is positivity rates in Cebu's three main cities have recently been between 10 and 15% so more testing is in order to prevent their hospitals reaching full capacity. Over the past month hospital occupancy there has risen from 25 to 40%.and a rise to 60 or 70% must be avoided.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...accines/story/

An interesting report from GMA on a vaccine "dummy run".

Gazza-d

I had my first dose of the Astra Zeneca today, second dose is scheduled for the 24th April. The UK total should hit 13 million today.

Raffin

New cases yesterday announced were a slightly higher 1,345 from 27.5k tests with positivity at 5.6%. Tests on 31.4k coming along.
Deaths at a shocking 114. GMA says 9 RDs included and ABS-CBN says 59..I will go with the latter as they often correct their news whereas GMA do not. But also there were nine recoveries that were previously tagged as deaths, information reported by both news organisations.
Severe cases 755, Critical 785...not much change despite the deaths as many are from months ago and some recent ones are obviously not from hospitals.
Case fatality rising further to 2.11%..nearly at world average at about 2.19%. For comparison Spain at 2.1%, France 2.35 and UK 2.88%.

Cases from Feb 9:


Other Mindanao 18


Las Pinas 14





NCR with 26.4% of national cases, 4A with 10.4%..combined they made up a higher 36.8% of total cases.
Ten NCR cities in the top 20. Muntinlupa with a seldom seen 20 total.
Central Visayas again with a high number, nearly all were from Cebu and half of them were from Cebu City.

Update on Silang, Cavite: latest available figures show 27 cases in the week up to and incl Feb 8. No case explosion then. I don't know if the surprise entry restriction is still in place.

The hunt for the Cebu UK variant case...

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...om-cebu/story/

So the DOH finally admits he spent some time in Cebu before coming to Manila and testing positive for the UK variant. Now missing! So did he start it going around Cebu and contributing to the rapid case rise there? He was here way back in November and we know that that variant is more highly transmissable. We await the Cebu genome results.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...als-doh/story/

The Philippines isn't the only country in the world with bone shaking roads and I haven't read about this issue coming up elsewhere. Is this another example of the military here focusing on very small risks too much?

Bealinehx

Congratulations. I'm not hiding my breath for a date for my first jab. perhaps sometime in 2022.

Raffin

The UK vaccination programme and its implementation so far has gone some way to restore its battered reputation after what happened last year.
Here it's going to depend on the performance of the LGUs..most cities will do well, especially in the NCR, but smaller urban areas and those remote probably won't. As with most government programmes here eg the covid financial help, many will not get it, and we know that some are hesitant anyway. Getting up to 70-80% will be difficult.

I've had two texts lately reminding me to get my child immunized against polio, rubella etc! Think they will have to do a lot of this hopefully better targeted texting in the future to get more vaccinated.