Raffin

Yesterday another 7,757 new cases. The Philippines recorded the 14th highest number of new cases yesterday worldwide. The total included a nearly 3k backlog. Positivity up a little at 14.8%. Tests on the way at 40k.
Deaths at 39, 2 of them RDs.

Yesterday was another "mass recovery day" with 15.3k announced.
Active now at 73,072 , an increase of nearly 25k or 52% on ;last Sunday.
Severe cases in hospitals down 75 to 731, Critical up 78 to 804.

More detail:


Plus Bicol 31, E Visayas 30, MIM 30, OFW 21 and BARMM 8







NCR cases were up by 8% on the day and contributed 57% of the national total. The 4 other top regions from yesterday saw their case numbers fall.
Region 4A had 14% so together with the NCR had 71% of national cases. Together with Central Luzon's 9% these 3 regions had 80% of national cases.

The NCR had 14 cities in the top 20. Notable was Pasay up 172 on the day before, Pasig up 110. Taguig was up by 99, Navotas by 98 and Paranaque by 76. Caloocan up by 52.
Marikina was down 52.

In region 4A Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Rizal's numbers were all down on the day before.
In Central Luzon Bulacan's were also down but Pampanga's were up by 23.
Neuva Ecija is the region's third most populated province and for the first time it made the top 10 at tenth position.

Elsewhere Cebu City was up 48 to 170, LapuLapu was at 78, Mandaue City at 49. So these 3 cities added to 297 or 64% of the region's cases.

Davao City added 36, Baguio City 49 cases.

Santiago City, Isabela again added a significant number....87.

As of today to try to control the surge in cases Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Bulacan join the NCR in GCQ ( the 3 region 4A provinces were formerly in MGCQ). But a GCQ with extra restrictions, making the quarantine levels meaningless:

https://www.rappler.com/nation/duter...zal-march-2021

Sensible as Easter usually has a great deal of movement from Manila and its surrounding area to provinces nationwide.. Most other measures will likely do little, except perhaps restricting travel to essential reasons. The death knell to local tourism again if it is enforced in my neck of the woods, Tagaytay. It had 63 cases in the latest week's numbers, much higher than the figures for other locations here in Upper Cavite. Whether these were linked to tourism is not known, but it seems likely most were.
Household mixing is again discouraged, but no order again made as in some European countries.

Raffin

Another total over 8k yesterday, not surprising with positivity at nearly 15%. About 3,500 of the cases were from a backlog. Tests in process at 38k.They really need to increase consistently to over 40k at least with the high positivity now.
There were 4 new deaths announced.
Active cases now at the highest since Aug 15, at nearly 81k.
The Severe in the main hospitals up 79 to 810, the Critical down 75 to 729. Hmmm?

Location detail:


Plus Unident 38, OFW 23, other Mindanao 59






Slightly different picture yesterday with the NCR down in cases, Though Region 4A compensated rising by 265 on yesterday the four other regions in the top 6 all reported less. So the total share of the top 6 regions was down to 83.5% of the total. The regions of W. Visayas, Illocos and those in Mindanao added cases.
Still the NCR had 15 of its 17 cities in the top 20 urban areas.

The majority of NCR cities had less cases with the most notable Pasay with 249 less and Paranaque with 89 less. Significantly less new cases also for Pasig, Valenzuala, Marikina and Navotas.. Manila down by 58. But Taguig had 135 more cases, Mandaluyong 48 and tiny San Juan 37 more. QC up 55 and closing in on 1k cases a day, but we must remember it has an over 3m population.

In region 4A all provinces except Batangas had more cases. Cavite had 162 more and Rizal 94 more.

In Central Luzon Bulacan was up 79 on yesterday's count. Pampanga was down 7.

In the Central Visayas Cebu City was 16 cases up on the day before and the total with Mandaue and LapuLapu Cities added was 19 up at 316, These 3 cities contributed 65% of Central Visayas cases.

Baguio City notably had 82 more cases added than yesterday at 131.
Davao City well under control with only 25 more cases announced.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/03...as-form-bubble

The right hand and the left...one part of the government telling people to only make essential journeys in the new NCR+ bubble. Then another part encouraging "staycations" in another part of the bubble! It was interesting yesterday to see checks being made on travelers at checkpoints within the bubble yesterday at some of its external borders.. Initially many people were stopped from crossing, then a directive came not to do that as long as they were following the pandemic rules. Understandable as infection rates differ greatly within the NCR plus area.

Hospitals in the NCR under great pressure: Eg Marikina.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/22/...hospitals-full

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/22/...9-bed-capacity

Vague ...and late... plans on hiring more health workers!

More definitive news on the virus variants:

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

Even with this the DOH still maintaining there is no evidence of community transmission, just local transmission! It gives them more room in the media to tell off the public for not following the guidelines.

The comparison last week with the week before last:

Last week case average 5,634 a day. The week before 3,639....a 1,995 or 55% increase!

Raffin

A much lower total announced yesterday at 5,837. Probably reflecting lower reporting and testing over the weekend. An over 800 backlog included. Positivity up further at 15.4%. Tests in progress 19.2k.
Deaths 20 with 8 of them RDs.
Active cases now at 86,200.
Hospital patient condition daily data quite volatile lately.....Severe down 34 and Critical up 47 to 776 in both categories.

Location detail:


Also: MIM 19, OFW 10, other Mindanao 47







Regionally NCR dominating with 61% of the reduced case total. Region 4A with a higher than usual 17.8%. Central Luzon is the weakest member of the 3 regional areas now clearly the epicenter. Together they gave 87% of cases. The top 6 regions, with W Visayas displacing the CAR for yesterday at least, contributed nearly 94%.

Unidentified up at 51, with 11 of those NCR, 40 elsewhere. Maybe due to tests being processed further away and/or more mobility of cases?

For the NCR it had 15 of its 17 cities in the top 20 urban areas.
Most of the larger cities had less cases. But notably Pasay recorded 86 more, Caloocan 72 and Paranaque 43. For the smaller cities Muntinlupa, Navotas and Pateros had between 10 and 20 more. Malabon and San Juan were nearly unchanged.

Provincially Bulacan was up 50 and Batangas up 15. Cavite, Laguna and Rizal all fell compared to yesterday..

The DOH covid tracker site not yet updated so can't report on Baguio, Cebu and Davao cities...except to say they must have all had less than 70 cases.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/video/news/...law-last-month

Even if it is eventually found to be a misunderstanding this just adds to the reputation the Philippines is getting as being difficult to deal with.

How it looks internationally with the Philippines surge of new cases:


New cases March 22.

Raffin

Yesterday 6,666 new cases but 7 labs not reporting. Still lower weekend numbers affecting the total. The total today included a backlog of over 1,700. Positivity constant at 15.3%. Tests in progress at a higher 41.8k.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/24/...o-130000-daily

Even boosting to a more realistic 50k would bring a great benefit of discovering about another 1,500 cases daily.

Deaths at 47, 11 RDs included.

Active cases at 91,574.

Severe up 48 to 824 and Critical down 43 to 733. More large changes.

Location detail:


MIM 25, OFW 22. other Mindanao 59







NCR up 179 on the day before, 4A up 41. But the biggest rises were in Central Luzon, up 224 and in the CAR, up 168.
The NCR, 4A and Central Luzon together accounted for 83.4% of national new cases.
The top 6 regions 92.7%.

Unidentified was the 11th largest region!

For the NCR there were 13 of its cities in the top 20 urban areas.

The biggest changes on yesterday were in QC, up 125, Marikina 123, Navotas 54 and Pasig 53. Going down were Caloocan by 118, Pasay 113, Malabon 96. Tiny San Juan dropped 31.
Muntinlupa was unchanged.

Provincially Bulacan was up by 91 on yesterday's figures. Cavite and Batangas were mainly unchanged. Rizal and Laguna showed small rises.
Benguet was up 64. For its capital Baguio City had 18 cases on March 23 but more at 89 yesterday.

In the Central Visayas Cebu City had 57 on March 23 then 56 yesterday.
Mandaue and LapuLapu Cities combined 37 followed by 70 yesterday.
The three cities at a lower than usual 56% of the region's total yesterday.

Davao City had 16 then only 12 yesterday.

OCTA have put out a report showing the significant case rises in many provinces in N and Central Luzon.
Batangas especially and Pampanga both showing greater rises than those provinces in the new NCR plus bubble area.



A serious situation in the NCR with ICU capacity at 71% use, positivity at over 15%. Reproductive rate at about 2. Attack rate about 26 per 100k. Still low compared to many UK areas which are still between 25 and 50, but the UK is trending down.

A two week GCQ plus in the NCR+ bubble certainly won't be enough!


NCR cases now well above the previous peak.

Gazza-d

The UK is averaging 1.6 million tests a day so a few thousand difference a day is doing nothing.

Bealinehx

As I wrote before I strongly believe that a realistic number of daily SARS 2 new cases is many, many, more times greater than the published numbers. MM and environs has a large proportion of the population under 16, who for the most part do not present symptoms. Overcrowding in the barrios is a recipe for super spreaders and I wonder how many do not come forward having known symptoms.

Raffin

The UK greatly ramped up testing earlier this month from under a million daily to well over. But only hit 1.6m on four days. Latest 7 day average about 1.2m.
Interesting that lab based PCR testing in the UK is trending at only about 280k a day out of a capacity of 760k. Here the DOH only count that type of testing, now running at between 30 and 40k a day. No data available for other testing here.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing


Still a big difference, but then the UK has more infection to find. The estimate for England as a whole now is 1 in 340.currently. For the Philippines that would equate to over 320k cases. Officially national active cases here are now at 86k. But for the NCR plus area I think we are now much closer to the UK high prevalence areas in N and Central England.




Question is has this country any ability to greatly increase testing of all types and its abysmal tracing? Aiming for 50k or so a day lab PCR s is all I think they can do and then add to that other rapid testing. It will find more infections than 1,500 a day if we add in the other tests and improve the bad situation.

Raffin

Yes, I agree the under reporting here is likely more proportionally than in the UK. The only thing I would say is that I am not aware much of teams going around residential areas in the UK looking for cases, as has been happening a lot recently in barangays in MM. Saw it once when they were looking for variant cases in the Bristol area. .The barangay structure is an advantage for infection control, but at the same time a disadvantage in that they tend to be too densely populated.

Raffin

Yesterday a record 8,773. 6 labs did not report. Backlog of over 3k cases added to the testing of 35.5k individuals which gave a higher positivity of 16.1%. Tests in preparation at 41.8k.
Deaths 56 with 7 of them RDs.

So active cases now at a record 99,891.
Severe at 799, down 25..but critical up 66 at 799. Only those who make it to a proper hospital!

Location detail:


Bicol 32, other Mindanao 101, OFW 27



Just a strange coincidence that the figures for QC and Paranaque are exactly the same as the day before?
DOH site not loading at present for me to check.





Regionally the NCR added over 1,100 cases and gave 55.8% of the national total. A little less than the day before. Region 4A at 16.7% was about the same as the previous day.
Total for the two areas then 72.5%.

All the other top regions had more cases, with Central Luzon's share up to 9.3% .......except for the CAR where cases fell. Its place in the top 6 was taken by Western Visayas, where cases doubled. The top 6 made up 93.5%, a little more than the day before.

In the NCR its cities took the top 13 places in the top 20 table .Nearly all cities had more cases except Marikina, Paranaque and Quezon City...but the last two need to be checked as their numbers are exactly the same as for March 24.

The NCR R number estimated at a lower 1.91, down from 1.99, following the new restrictions. Not that significant when NCR positivity is about 18%.
Latest figure for NCR ICU use 74%, up from 71% on March 23.

Provincially big increases were reported from Cavite, with 166 more than the day before, and Pampanga which added 116 and more than doubled its cases. Bulacan's number fell slightly but Laguna, Rizal and Batangas all had more cases.

Cebu City at 125, double the number for March 23.
Also notable Santiago City in Isabela at 92.

You may have heard that lists are being drawn up to prosecute Mayors who have "jumped the gun" and had vaccinations; Then we have this:

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news..._picks&order=2

The local mayor where we live has just got the virus, and this is a low virus area. They are very vulnerable, have to meet a lot of people.

On barangays again, an OCTA report:




QC, Paranaque and Taguig have the most barangays in this list.
However Taguig are disputing their figure for the leading barangay here, Fort Bonifacio, and say it should be 166 not 342,
Knowing the Paranaque ones a little I am not surprised.

Raffin

Yesterday the DOH announced close to 10k daily cases, a record. Nearly half were from past testing. The most recent 32k tests gave a record 17.3% positivity. Tests coming along are at 40.8k.

Now over 109k active cases, another high.

Deaths 54 with 22 RDs. Deaths which reflect the situation many weeks ago, one which was slowly deteriorating though largely unrecognized.
Severe at 872, up 73. Critical down 36 at 763.

NCR Isolation bed use up to 68%. ICU at 74%.

Location detail:


MIM 41, other Mindanao 76, OFW 25




Unknown 10




Regionally the biggest percentage rises on the day before came from regions well away from the NCR, although as usual it had over 60% of cases.They rose on the day by 30%.
Illocos, new entrant to the top 6, had a 56% increase, Cagayan Valley by 42 and Central VIsayas by 40%. CAR had fewer cases as did W Visayas. Both out of the top 6 regions.

NCR with 4A and Central Luzon...almost the NCR plus bubble area.... had 92% of national cases.

For the NCR QC and Manila together had one third of the new cases. QC alone recorded 15% more cases, but case numbers from Manila were largely unchanged.

For the other cities there were some big changes on the day before:

Starting from the top there were big rises in Makati and Taguig, adding 156 and 208 cases on the day before. Further down the much smaller populated Navotas added 162.
The biggest fall was in Malabon, recording 135 less. Caloocan had 71 less and Pasay 62 less. Tiny San Juan and Pateros had 70 and 61 less.

Provincially Bulacan showed the biggest daily change with an increase of 40% on the day. to post 594 new cases. Cavite was just in front of Bulacan with 681 cases, an increase of 21%.
The other large 4A provinces by population all had smaller increases.
In Central Luzon Pampanga recorded 32% less cases yesterday.

In the Central Visayas Cebu City posted a few less cases at 117 and together with LapuLapu and Mandaue Cities the 3 contributed 57% of the region's cases for the day.

Elsewhere Baguio City counted only 10 new cases.
In Isabela, Santiago City posted another high number....81 cases.
Davao City had 45, higher than recently.

Distributing the meagre Chinese vaccines around the country:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/26/...covid-19-shots

NCR, Cebu yes. But why Davao? Last two days the Davao region had 39 and 96 cases.

Hospitals:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/26/...-marikina-city

Marikina, one of the smaller NCR cities, having a hard time.

But they have a good idea on isolation when there are many positive or suspect cases in a household:

https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/natio...cid=uxbndlbing

The Philippines now at 11th in the international new cases table. Generally neglected in international analysis of the pandemic, except for its long lockdown in 2020, it will now unfortunately start to get much more attention.

Raffin

Another total just under 10k, with a larger than normal 11 labs not reporting. The total included a 4k backlog. Positivity maintaining over 16%. Tests coming along 40.8k.

Active cases now at 118k and supposedly 827 in both Severe and Critical states in the main hospitals, down 45 and up 64 on the day before.

Deaths 10 with 4 of them RDs.

Some location detail:

The two main regions for cases, NCR and 4A, both had less cases.. NCR had 151 less and 4A , more significantly, 181 less.
CAR stood out by more than doubling its number on the previous day from 140 to 361.
Central Luzon and W Visayas also increased their cases modestly.
Ilocos fell on the previous day.. Davao region had more.

In the NCR the main city of note was Marikina, with a rise of 240 cases on the previous day to over 500.
Other cities with rises were Manila, Mandaluyong, Paranaque, San Juan, Valenzuala, Pasay and Pateros.
The biggest faller was Taguig, from 425 to 310.
QC, Pasig, Navotas, Muntinlupa, Malabon and Makati also had less new cases.

Provinciially Rizal , Batangas and Pampanga provinces all had significant increases on the day.
Cavite and Bulacan both had significantly less cases.
Cases in Laguna also fell a little..

In the Central Visayas Cebu City with 126 cases and together with the two other main cities on the island gave 205 cases, about 56% ,of the region's case total.

Baguio City was at 69, 59 more than the day before and Davao City had 49, just 4 more than the day before.

Unsurprisingly a week of so called ECQ is starting tomorrow, in the NCR + bubble area. Standing out to me is that a curfew starts at 6pm!?

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/27/...easter-sources

The effect on the economy will be minimal as it's the Easter week. In fact with people mainly not able to go to their Provinces of origin there might be more shoppers around than usual. Not what the authorities want!

Raffin

Complete DOH charts for yesterday's cases:


OFW 30, E Visayas 26, other Mindanao 69







Top 20 urban areas:

First 11 places in top 20 urban areas to NCR cities. Followed by Antioplo, Rizal 150, Bacoor, Cavite 130, Cainta, Rizal 117, Imus, Cavite 88. Plus 3 more NCR cities.
Also Santiago City, Isabela,115 with 45% of Isabela's cases.


Interesting Dr John You tube talk on virus mutations, including that vaccinations can produce more.

He also has another talk on a promising anti viral in preparation.

Gazza-d

Here is Dr John on anti virals, not an alternative to vaccinations but still could be a game changer.

mikemike

do not be surprised to see ncr figures fall and regions rise as the virus is exported back to the provinces for the holy week , last buses leave tonight at 21;00 We will then be told this move is a master stroke to curb the virus in the ncr......until,they all get back in two weeks time!!

Raffin

There are only 4 regions, all in Mindanao, where recent positivity is below the 5% WHO standard for control. Seven regions are between 10 and 20% and Cagayan is worse than the NCR's 20%. So picking up the virus in the provinces is also quite possible.
Leisure trips out of the bubble are stated to be banned. Does that include Easter trips to the provincial home?