Raffin

Yesterday a further 4,898 cases, slightly down on the day before with 5 labs not reporting. Over 1,300 from the results backlog. Positivity up again to 11.9%. Tests in preparation 36.1k.

Deaths at 63 including 16 RDs.
Severe and Critical at 771 each, both down 23 on the day before. The daily changes in the hospital data are often not very believable!

Yesterday was another mass recovery day with 13.4k recoveries.
Active cases are now at 48,157, a 34% rise on a week ago!

Some locational detail:

Top regions: NCR 2369 (48.2%), 4A 739 (15.1), Central Visayas 542 (11.1), Central Luzon 439 (9.0)
The top 4 regions accounting for well over 80% of national cases. The share of the NCR was up and 4A down somewhat on the day before, Central Luzon's and that of Central Visayas were both up.

NCR cities: QC 433, Manila 435, Pasay 263, Makati 204, Pasig 163, Paranaque 147, Taguig 136, Caloocan 127, Marikina 119....all were 100 and over.
Order similar to the day before for the top 6 cities. Further down Taguig and Marikina had more cases.
High but below 100 were Navotas, Malabon, Valenzuala and Mandaluyong.
I omitted Mandaluyong from the 3 digit cases list yesterday. It actually had 107 new cases. Yesterday's cases were down to 86, but it is a good example of how serious the recent surge is in the NCR:


Mandaluyong's cases were flatlining for many weeks, then a sharp and steep increase.

In contrast the NCR as a whole had a noticeably gradual increase in Jan and Feb, as did several of its cities.

For region 4A Cavite led as usual, with 342 cases ,but had an alarming 80 more cases. Rizal was second with 219, only a few more on the day before.

In the Central Visayas Cebu City was up by 80 cases to 251. Together with Mandaue and LapuLapu the three biggest Cebu cities had 400 or 74%, of the region's 542 cases

In Central Luzon Bulacan's total rose by 66 to 312. Pampanga's were also up, by 13.

Cases from both Baguio and Davao Cities were down on the day before...to 38 and 23.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...rch-end/story/
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/natio...S?ocid=BingHPC

Projections assuming the current Reproduction numbers are maintained yield large daily case numbers, mainly in the NCR and surrounding areas of Luzon. For comparison current UK daily numbers are 5-6,000 and trending downwards. Figures of 20k a day seem unlikely as one would assume many more restrictions will soon have to be imposed and re-imposed.
So far not much, except from today the Manila wide 10pm to 5 am curfew is being imposed.
It has exceptions:

https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/natio...Y?ocid=BingHPC

I think this sort of measure will become more common:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/14/...nsite-capacity

Gazza-d

Today Sunday the UK recorded 4618 new cases and 52 deaths so for one day the Philippines surpasses the UK numbers.

Raffin

A 20% increase in NCR cases meant yesterday's total was over 5,400. Just 5 labs did not report. Positivity was at 11.5%. Tests not keeping up with just under half of the announced total coming from a backlog. Tests in process 36k. Not enough with positivity high and increasing. Only good thing is that the growth is mainly in Manila and nearby, where increasing testing should be easier, though processing results will need more labs and maybe samples sent outside the NCR?

Deaths 8 with 3 of them RDs.

Active cases at over 53k with Severe and Critical both at 749, down again.....by 22.

Last week vs the week before:

Average cases per day 3,639 (2414)....a just over 50% increase.
Average daily deaths 43 (25)

Location details:




Note the high number of unidentified results.






Note: have dispensed with the top 20 table for now as it has become almost a repeat of the NCR table.

NCR leading by far with nearly 53% of national cases. Region 4A next with nearly 16%.. Central Visayas with nearly 8% followed closely by Central Luzon with 7.6%.

NCR up 20% on the day, 4A up 16%. Both C Visayas and Luzon were down.

QC with 23% of NCR cases alone! And an increase of over 50% on the day before. Other NCR cities are showing similar increases on the day before eg Pasig and Taguig.
But Makati was about the same and Pasay was down by nearly 80 cases. Malabon was up by over 90 cases.

Provincially Cebu led with, as usual, having the great majority of Central Visayas cases. Cebu City with 148 or 38% of them. But its daily total was down by over 100 on the day before.
Cavite is the next province in terms of cases but it reported nearly 50 less than the day before. The cities of Imus and Dasmarinas together accounted for nearly half of the province's total. They are NCR commuting areas. Rizal is similar with Antipolo and Cainta having more than half its total of cases, which also grew yesterday. Laguna cases went up by 34.

In Central Luzon Bulacan's total fell yesterday by over 100. Pampanga's rose a little.

Vaccination news:

The President making more interventions with vaccine priorities:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/16/...ontra-covid-19

Must be many thousands in Manila alone. Who will be put back if they are promoted? Yes, also very difficult to do!

One of the main reasons for the persistence of the outbreak here is poor contact tracing:

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...story/?just_in

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news..._picks&order=5

Not "most". 14%....but it seems likely that is a major transmission source here. Distancing is often difficult here in many settings of daily life and ventilation getting to be a bigger problem as it gets warmer.

Raffin

Cases down to 4,437. Seven labs not reporting. The DOH's latest testing was at the same level as the day before, but the backlog results added were a lot less at about 1,600. Positivity was down a little at 11.2%. Tests coming along down at 29k.

Deaths at 11 with 4 of them RDSs.

Active cases now up at 57,736 , the highest since Oct 3, with Severe and Critical in hospital up only 2 at 751. Little daily movement lately indicating capacity limits close?
Lately Severe and Critical patients are often the same number. Strange and not what it used to be.

Some location detail:

Regions: NCR 2231 (50.3%), 4A 767 (17.3), Central Luzon 405 (9.1), Central Visayas 279 (6.1) , CAR 176 (4), Cagayan Valley 114 (2.6)

NCR down at 50.3% of national cases, down over 2%. 4A;s share up 1.4% on the day before. Central Visayas's share down 1.8%.

Large falls in many NCR cities eg Malabon down 160, Marikina 80, Valenzuala 53, Taguig 55, Pasig 135, QC 135.
Cases rose slightly in Manila and Paranaque. More significant were rises in Navotas and Muntinlupa....by 14 and 20.

With region 4A Cavite cases were down by 47, Laguna's by over 100. Batangas's down by 26. But Quezon cases were up by 25 and more significantly Rizal cases were up by 73.
In Central Luzon Bulacan was up by 52 but Pampanga down 40.
In the Central Visayas for the large city urban cases on Cebu, ie Cebu, Mandaue and LapuLapu Cities together were down to 141... but still over half of Cebu island's cases.
Elsewhere Baguio City was up at 65 and Davao City up also at 44.

The OCTA research group keep recalculating the R number. Now over 2. Consequently 11k cases a day in 2 weeks time is possible.
Their best guess at the percentage of variants is 10%, So one might then conclude that nearly all of this surge is down to lax behavour. But as they explain if these variants started in just one ore two areas and then spread rapidly, as they can do, then their contribution has been greater.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/16/...continues-octa

New restrictions on international arrivals announced from March 20 for a month:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/16/...continues-octa

Raffin

Late coming in complete regional and NCR case numbers for yesterday:



Cases here mainly from the weekend. Expect more today.

NCR cities:

Raffin

New cases announced yesterday were actually 50 less than the day before at 4,387. Six labs not reporting. But testing found 5,321 positives , so nearly 1,000 positives were held back from being announced. Why? Positivity went up much more to 14.1%. So good that tests coming are now to over 40k at 41.8k.

Deaths 18 with 5 RDs.

Active cases now at 61.7k.
Severe up 51 at 802. Critical down 10 at 741.

Some location details:

Regions: NCR 2471 (56.7%), 4A 603 (13.7), Central Luzon 283 (6.4), Central Visayas 235 (5.4), Cagayan Valley 195 (4.4)
NCR very dominating and these 6 regions gave over 90% of the national total.

A notable 10.8% increase in the NCR and even more of an increase on the day in Region 4A at over 21%. Central Luzon and Cagayan both down.
For the NCR: cities on the up were led by QC with another 125 cases. Makati, Marikina and Pasay all reported about 50 more. Malabon, Navotas, Pasay and Taguig all had lower case numbers:
QC 605, Manila 370, Makati 248, Pasay 168, Caloocan 168, Pasig 153, Paranaque 145, Taguig 112 and Marikina 107 were those cities with 100 and over.

In Calabarzon all provinces except Batangas and Laguna were down, especially Rizal, which was down by 155. Batangas was up 44.

In Central Luzon Bulacan was down by 100.

In the Central Visayas Cebu's 3 main cities reported a similar number to the day before at 144 more cases, 61% of the region's.

Baguio City was up 10 to 74.
Davao just 7 new cases.

News on variants:


The DOH in this graphic saying that variants do seem to be playing some role in the recent surge of cases in a number of regions. But lvery limited as they are only finding a few percent of samples with variants. Though we do know that Genome analysis here has a low capacity and is slow.

For more detail:
https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/17/...imes-doh-warns

Vaccination roll out:

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...g-april/story/


UK covid vacconation progresss

As you can see the UK, with the advantages of the NHS and a surer vaccine supply could only get over 400k a day for a short time. Maintaining 450k a day here seems mightily over optimistic to me..
Doing a back of the envelope calculation yes you could theoretically get about 160m shots in arms here over a year. But they're likely to be given at much less than the advertised daily rate from the DOH Secretary and so at the end of 1 year probably most people will have had one shot but many not their second. Then of course there's the possibility of booster shots needed.
What do you need to do here to get herd immunity here anyway? More. Because the outbreak here, even allowing for under reporting, has not, up to now been a large one, antibodies and other cell immunity gained from previous infection are likely to be at a much lower prevalence here. The latest UK data suggests about 35% of the population there already have a level of immunity from past infection due to the presence of antibodies alone,



Last, as has been obvious all along deaths here due to covid have been many more than announced in the DOH figures. Admittedly the same as in most other countries, especially the less developed and those more developed who hide the truth from their people. Even on DOH figures the death record here is a poor one ,at just below the world average, given the very young population. It's likely the recent surge will put the Philippines above the world average in a few months time..

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/17/...probable-cases

Raffin

Some additions to yesterday's data:


Unidentified again high.


San Juan high for a pop of under 150,000.

Raffin

Increased early week results now out with 5,290 cases. Eight labs did not report. Over 300 results held over. Positivity from 40k individual tests again at 14.1%. Tests coming along at 42k. Will they be able to increase further given the high positivity? Along with contact tracing.

Deaths at 21 with 6 RDs.
Severe and Critical both reported at 799, down 3 and up 58.
Active cases are now over 66k. A 6 month high.

Some location detail:

Top regions: NCR 2767, 4A 917, Cen Visayas 473, Cen Luzon 413, Cagayan Valley 159
Just below 90% of cases.
All except Cagayan increased on the day before. Region 4A by more than 50%.
NCR at 52.3% and 4A at 17.3%. So the two together accounting for nearly 70% of all cases!

For the NCR QC fell 66 from yesterday's large total pf 605.. Makati. fell by 25. There were other smaller falls but they were outweighed by big rises in Manila, Marikina, and Pasay. Five other cities had smaller rises.
In Calabarzon there were substantial rises in each of its five provinces. In Cavite by 84% to 371 cases.

In Central Luzon Bulacan cases rose by 38% to 245.

In the Central Visayas Cebu City reported a much higher 200 cases. Together with Mandaue and LapuLapu Cities there were 320 cases, two thirds of the region's cases.

Baguio City had just 11 cases, CAR cases were well down at 41.
Davao City was at 43 cases, continuing its recent low figures.

Vaccine priorities:

Another category now being suggested...resident in the NCR:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/video/news/...id-cases-spike

You can see their point but it further complicates the priorities and will look unfair to those in the provinces.
There are some big differences in infection rates across the NCR . And you would think that with its location, the concentration of medical resources and wealth of its cities the NCR will get a large proportion of the early vaccines anyway?

Raffin

Latest NCR hospital data:


Overall 53% occupancy seems not too bad...

By district Manila and N Manila are both at about 47%. the East at 51%...but the Southern area is the highest at 69%.

Gazza-d

I guess in a country where most people can't afford to go to hospital they being not stretched should not be a surprise.

Raffin

The DOH data excludes what they call "infirmaries", no ICU beds and with probably poorer treatment of covid patients. I bet they're much fuller.

Raffin

Yesterday new cases announced were not far from 2k more than the day before, at 7,103. The highest ever (previous high Aug 10 at 6,958) although earlier in 2020 testing was much lower. Five labs not reporting. But there are now over 200 in the country. The total included a backlog of over 1.7k. Positivity went up again to 15%.


Tests in preparation at 39.9k
Daily figures would be much higher if they can ramp up testing. However, some have speculated that LGU staff have been diverted to vaccination duties making that more difficult.

Deaths 13 with 4 RDs.
Active case number again up at 73,264, the highest since Aug 29.
Severe cases (in DOH approved hospitals!) up 7 tp 806, Critical down 66 (!) to 733

Some location detail:

NCR 3,779, 4A 1,090, Central Luzon 762, Central Visayas 459, CAR 175, Cagayan Valley 140
These 6 regions gave just over 90% of national cases.
NCR plus 4A again had about two thirds of national cases.
Adding in Central Luzon to complete the area around the NCR gives 79% of national cases on yesterday's figures.

NCR cases were up over 1,300 on the day, a 53% increase. Central Luzon added 480, 4A 487 and Central Visayas had 224. more. Most notable was Central Luzon with a 90% daily increase as Central Visayas is a long established hotspot.

For NCR cities: QC 752, Manila 609, Makati 321, Caloocan 271, Pasig 262, Pasay 249, Taguig 244 and Paranaque 211 Those were the top 8 cities.
They gave 77% of the NCR total.
Below them and over 100 were Marikina 172 followed by Mandaluyong and Valenzuala, both at 144.
All cities increased their count, though Navotas by only 1.
Most concerning on rising case numbers, due to their lower population: Pasay and Marikina.

In region 4A all provinces showed an increase, but Laguna and Rizal stood out with increases of 164 and 134 over the previous day.

In Central Luzon Bulacan increased by 287 on the previous day's number, that's a 65% increase. In contrast Pampanga's number fell.

In the Central Visayas the three largest Cebu cities again contributed about 60% of the region's total.

Baguio and Davao Cities reported 49 and 31 new cases.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news...9-cases/story/

Government officials get an easy ride here with a deferential public and timid media. The experience of many countries around the world in 2020 was that you must reduce cases to a very low level to really control this virus. Allowing cases to just flatline invites future increases. Anyway the NCR showed a slight but consistent increase from January through to February this year. Testing was way down in that period, even though positivity was not consistently below 5%,as the WHO recommends for getting control.
Surprised at the steepness of the increase? Not if you have a variant like the "UK" one, as the UK showed at the end of last year. While genome testing cannot be definitive here on the role of variants in the surge, many experts were saying they were a likely factor, given the sudden increases. Th DOH meanwhile wanted to blame the public for most of it. Taking a lead from the top this authoritarian approach from the DOH led them to not maintain the testing effort and not look to learn from other countries. The information to do this is easily available on the web.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/19/...imism-variants

On explaining the surge in the NCR and surrounding regions this WHO official added a new one..."vaccine optimism".
But I don't think there's much of that about. Surveys show many people didn't even want to get one. Then there's the doubts over Chinese vaccines. Of course this may all change when significant quantities of vaccine arrive next month and the general public start to get their shots. But did they ever get excited over the past 3 months? The government tried to hype it up. eg by the President meeting supplies at the airport etc, but did all that convince a sceptical public to behave differently?

Raffin

The complete DOH tables and the latest OCTA research update:


Plus OFW 32, other Mindanao 91

Below 100 cases NCR cities:


14 NCR cities in the top 20.
NCR R estimate now 1.96




Non NCR cities in the top 20:

10: Cebu 153
15 and 16: Cainta and Antipolo 86 and 85
18 IloIlo 76
19 LapuLapu 76
20 Bacoor 69




Yellow: alarming increases.
Orange: significant numbers for the parameter (s)
Blue: improvement

Raffin

Surge continues with daily record 8k cases announced yesterday. Nearly 900 more cases than the day before. Six labs not reporting. Positivity at 14.6% with a backlog included of over 3,600 cases as test processing struggles to keep up. Tests on the way 40k.

Deaths at 30 with 10 RDs.
Active cases at 80,642 the second highest. Highest was on Aug 16 at 83,109.

Severe unchanged at 806, Critical down 7 at 726.

Some location detail:

Regions: NCR 4059, 4A 1348, Central Luzon 828, Central Visayas 409 , Cagayan Valley 349, CAR 277
These six regions gave 91% of the national total.

NCR 51% and 4A 17%...again the two together two thirds of the national total.
The NCR put on 280 more cases than the day before, 4A added nearly a quarter more.
All regions except Central Visayas , with 50 less, added more cases than they did the day before.

In the NCR: QC 870, Manila 689, Pasig 329, Makati 297, Pasay 285, Caloocan 228, Paranaque 222 and Marikina 218.....were all 200 or more added.
Pasig adding 67, Manila 80 and QC 118 cases on yesterday's figures.
Notable fall for Taguig with cases added, by nearly 100.

In region 4A Batangas and Cavite both added a lot more yesterday than the day before.
Laguna additions fell by 23.

In Central Luzon Bulacan added 95 more cases to record 534 added.
Pampanga added 118 yesterday, compared to 152 the day before.

In Cebu the three largest cities added 246 cases, 28 less than the day before. A lower than usual 53% of the region's cases.

Baguio City creeping up at 63
Davao City also up at 60.

More variants found:

https://www.rappler.com/nation/doh-r...-march-20-2021

Apart from a NCR wide curfew, closures of businesses recently re-opened and opening hours restrictions of govt offices, the main measure seems to be lockdowns of small residential areas in those cities with surging cases. Unfortunately the surge may have become community wide and is not localized any more.
At present the government is trying hard to avoid a Manila wide lockdown. Most commentators agree...for now...but one or two, plus some hospital staff, are proposing a short lockdown or "circuit breaker":

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/20/...urge-continues

This was tried last year for 2 weeks and apart from placating the hospital workers for a while, did little. Longer lockdown would mean much more financial help and the only way the government could afford that is to drastically revise its spending plans. All very embarrassing. No easy solutions, given the late arrival of vaccines.

Politically only one thing is going for them and that is the new covid surges in many European countries. Though in our neighbourhood Indonesia has been doing much better with a falling new cases trend and 3% vaccinated once, in contrast to here with only 0.2% vaccinated.

Raffin

Complete DOH tables for yesterday's case announcement:


Plus MIM 30, Unident. 29, other Mindanao 35









Note: Santiago City pop about 150k.

Latest DOH charts for 3 top recent cases regions:


NCR


Calabarzon


Central Luzon
Note: Central Visayas has about 4k more cases for the pandemic as a whole, but Region 3 cases have been growing more quickly lately and with its much larger population has more potential for future case growth. Surge there started in early January, earlier than the NCR's and Calabarzon's. But from a lower level.