Raffin

Pangasinan went up to level 3 mid Jan to end. So did La Union. But its site still says "day tourists" no entry from level 3 areas! You found out that is so helpfully now changed to only if recent negative PCR test. Where we are there are 2 bordering provinces, Laguna and Batangas both at AL3 as is Cavite. As far as I know no travel restrictions. Crazy as both your province and La Union at same level.

Bealinehx

Just downloaded the DOH VaxCert showing all three Covid vaccinations
GazzD. I reduce my vaccination certs on my PC before printing, then lamination is only 30 pesos!!

Raffin

Today about 12k more tests and about 2,300 extra cases at 18,191. But 3.3k were from the large backlog, most of these the DOH say from the last 2-3 weeks. Two labs late to submit. Positivity down a little at 35.2%.

Recoveries 22,014

Deaths 74, 26 RDs

Active 226,521

Severe 1,509, up 2. Critical 309, up 1

NCR ICU 41%, down 1%. National 49%, up 1%
NCR Ward beds 47.3%, down 3%


The latest report from the UK REACT study, on antigens (virus) levels. Gives no support for vaccinating 17 years and below in terms of them spreading infection. "Study confirms Omicron reinfections" video.

Raffin

More tests yesterday and the NCR with nearly 200 less cases. At some point it may reach a minimum but maybe not as low as early December pre Omicron, when it was well below 100 a day. Due to the different nature of this variant..
QC had a slight increase, otherwise the 5 other biggest cities all had less.
.
The CL region added over 100 more but region 4A fell by 300.
For the provinces around the NCR all fell except Cavite, which added about 50 more.
Further away the Ilocos region stood out with over 600 more reported.
The CAR had over 400 more. Cagayan Valley had over 100 more.

In the Visayas WV had over 200 more.

All the Mindanao regions had increased case numbers. Most notably Davao nearly doubled its to 2,022.
SOCCSKSARGEN had 250 more.

All cities except Zamboanga reported more cases
Davao added 484 to 1,054.
Baguio added 91 to 391.
Iligan City more than doubled its cases to 68.
IloIlo City (which I am now tracking) more than doubled its cases to 391.

Alert Level 3 up in 6 new areas:

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/27/...tarting-friday

We await to see if the Omicron wave behaves the same or differently away from the NCR plus area.

Raffin

Today a few hundred more cases announced at 18,638. Again thousands taken from the backlog, 3,046 today. Four late labs would likely have added about 170 cases. Positivity at 34.6% from 62.7k tests. For comparison the UK with around 100k official positives daily has a positivity rate of about 4%.

Recoveries 231,658

Deaths 68, 22 RDs
59 Jan, 4 Sep, 1 Aug
4 back to March

Active 231,658

NCR ICU 42%, up 1%. National 49%, unchanged
Ward Beds NCR 47.4%

Severe 1,509, unchanged. Critical 312, up 3

Raffin

The NCR went down a few cases at 2,256, 12.1% of the national total.
In its biggest cities Taguig stood out by reporting over 200 more.

Around the NCR the CL region had a few less cases but region 4A totaled about 280 more, with Laguna contributing 300 more ..
MIMAROPA reported over 150 more.
WV had over 300 more and CV added over 400 more over the day before.
Cebu City added over 70 more, IloIlo City 78 more to 469.

In Mindanao NM added nearly 300 more cases over the day before, Zamboanga over 100 more.
BARMM put on over 120 more to 345, Caraga region over 150 more to 658.
GenSan and Zamboanga cities each reported more cases, 28 and 54.

Deaths rising:


Too early to be attributed to Omicron variant, most likely due to Delta infections starting in run up to Xmas. NB Ignore trend line.

Asian new cases comparison yesterday (Worldometer)


Additionally Indonesia 9805 12th, Thailand 8,450 14th and Malaysia 5,512 in 20th position.

Raffin

Late show from the DOH.

Today 17,382 new cases, 3 labs late and 159 from backlog. The late labs would have accounted for about 130 more cases.
Positivity at exactly one third from 56.5k tests.

Recoveries 35,382

Deaths 70, 24 RDs

Active 213,587

Severe 1,526, up 17. Critical 318, up 6

NCR ICU 40%, down 2%. National 48%, down 1%
NCR Ward beds 45%, down 2.4%

Davao hospital, 1,500 beds, averaging about 35 a day cases this month. High prevalence there of course but they should have PPE.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/29/...tive-for-covid

Dr John told off by the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/60145237

Bealinehx

The reputation of The BBC has taken a mighty bashing over the last few years.
I get a sense that the views and fears of the indigenous population has been ignored. Perhaps this has resulted in the last general election election victory fronted by Mr Blobby.

Gazza-d

To me it sounds more like the BBC misunderstood the point being made. So who do we believe, scientists or reporters.

Bealinehx

Scientists have my vote.

old.sparkles

Dr John is also just a reporter of sorts - social media only

Scientists get my vote too.

Raffin

Here the BBC was right and Dr J wrong. I think wrong on three counts. First he misunderstood by implying that deaths with a pre-existing condition could be left out to give an accurate and meaningful picture. It's the ONS who correct him there, not the BBC! The BBC just reported it. To take another example many people each year die from pneumonia, underlying condition influenza.. Many times those who just have influenza on the death certificate. Then he titled his video as a "revelation". It has had 1.5M views so far. Surprisingly naive as he certainly knows there are a number of people on social media platforms peddling all sorts of weird conspiracy theories and incorrect information about covid.They jumped at this.
Also I see covid death figures as just the tip of an iceberg of suffering. The illnesses, long covid, the 6M on NHS waiting lists in the UK, economic, education effects. A pandemic. He could have mentioned some of those quickly to put the already incorrect 17k in proper context.

Dr J made a short comment on it in a recent video, but didn't admit he misunderstood the situation with underlying conditions on death certificates. He probably has not been involved with them. His expertise is good over many areas and great in some, so we can excuse him.

There is a background here between him and the BBC. The BBC did a critical piece on Ivermectin, a hobby horse of Dr J's. He fact checked it in one of his videos and made some comments about the lack of medical and scientific qualifications of the 3 journalists concerned. Although he himself is short of being a qualified doctor and a qualified expert in virology, microbiology etc. Which he often talks about and to his credit often says that some area is out of his depth.

I think he has rushed out one or two videos lately without enough thought. Ivermectin in Japan was another case.

Scientists or reporters? I think we can believe something when many established researchers, scientists in a number of countries say something, which is then reported in some detail by respected news media. Including You tube these days and Dr J is now one for many, but there are others. Problem is the time to watch them all. I think the BBC is still one. When the experts work for government organizations, medical companies it gets more difficult to assess.

PS Well I now see Dr John has put up a new video about this. Let's see what he says and then I may come back on this.

Gazza-d

What I took from his comments was out of the 154k deaths so far 137k (89%) had comorbidities. Perhaps I was being over simplistic.

Raffin

If that is what all that there was in the video then Ok. But the official data from death certs doesn't use the term comorbidities. I've given his original Freedom of Information video another run through and you hear the phrases "way lower", "surprisingly low" "profound" "huge story". Of course everyone knows comorbidities do not play well with covid. Because it gets from the lungs into the body and its organs.

Basically he should have said that the "underlying cause" on the death cert is the cause. If that's covid then covid is the cause, never mind that there are one or more underlying causes and other conditions listed there.



In the infuenza example I gave for England and Wales deaths in 2019 were only 1,213 when that was all there was on the cert. But where Pneumonia was as a cause along with Influenza 26,342. Influenza was the cause of the Pneumonia which caused the death. So Influenza was the cause of death and comes at the end of the list on the cert.
That's an easy example but with some conditions it would be more difficult for a doctor to put down the underlying cause. They have the option of joint cause, but the statisticians use rules to reduce that to one.

To be fair Dr J does talk about excess deaths from delayed cancer diagnosis and treatment. And he says at the end he is still processing the data. But if that is the case he should not have used words which made many think this was evidence of a large cover up.

Have yet to view his latest. Will do later.

Raffin

Yesterday a reversal in the recent NCR reductions, with over 1,300 more cases announced. Not due to backlog being included, that was small. Although the DOH did say they had problems with their system yesterday, causing late publication. So we will wait for more data. Not yet a huge story!
The NCR at a much higher 20.9% of all cases. Five of its six largest cities had more cases.

Not much change in regions CL and 4A. The latter region fell by about 170. But Bulacan, Cavite and Rizal provinces each had moderately more cases.
Otherwise in the North of Luzon Ilocos had over 600 more.
Cagayan reported over 100 more cases..

All Visayan regions were substantially down

As they were in Mindanao, apart from SOCCSKSARGEN, with over 150 more.

All the 9 cities I track were down or very nearly the same as the day before.

Weekly update later.