124,000 active COVID-19 cases seen by end-January

MANILA, Philippines — By the end of January, there will be more than 124,000 active cases of COVID-19 in the National Capital Region (NCR), according to the projection of Feasibility Analysis of Syndromic Surveillance using Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (FASSSTER).

At a press briefing, Elvira de Lara-Tuprio of the FASSSTER Team said there could be 124,067 active cases of COVID-19 in NCR by Jan. 31.

By Feb. 2, the number of active cases in the region was projected to reach 91,849 cases.

As of Jan. 24, there were 72,382 active cases of COVID-19 in NCR.

Tuprio said the mathematical model that they use in making projections “takes into consideration several factors” and not only the number of actual cases.

“We also consider the population mobility in general, compliance to minimum public health standards and the length of time it takes to detect cases,” she added.

FASSSTER, a web application for creating disease models for diseases and for visualizing syndromic surveillance, reports through a spatio-temporal map.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases uses FASSSTER for COVID-19 case projection, among others.

Downward trend

The reproduction number of COVID-19 in the NCR has decreased to less than 1.0, indicating a downward trend in new and active cases, a member of the OCTA Research Group said on Tuesday.

“The reproduction number in the NCR decreased to 0.91 (as of Jan. 21), or less than 1.0 for the first time since Dec. 23, 2021. The reproduction number was as high as 6.0 on Jan. 2,” OCTA fellow Guido David said.

“The reproduction number decreasing below 1.0 is correlated with a decrease in active cases, rather than a decrease in new cases. This means that active cases may still increase even as new cases have started to decrease,” he added.

Earlier, David projected new cases in NCR to drop to around 1,000 per day by the first week of February.

On Monday, NCR recorded 4,018 new cases out of the 24,938 new cases reported nationwide.

Meanwhile, OCTA fellow and molecular biologist Fr. Nicanor Austriaco stressed the need to “keep an eye” on the situation in regions surrounding NCR before making a decision on lowering the alert level.

“Patients in our hospitals are not just from the NCR…You cannot simply just look at the numbers in the NCR in order to anticipate what will happen in hospitals in NCR,” he said during an interview over One News.

“We have to make sure that the surge in the NCR plus its surrounding regions are also kept an eye on before we de-escalate the alert levels in the capital,” he said, adding that they expect hospital congestion in NCR to de-escalate faster with the Omicron variant than with the Delta surge last year.

17,677 cases

After almost three weeks, the daily tally for new COVID-19 cases went down to below 20,000 yesterday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported yesterday.

Based on DOH case bulletin, there were 17,677 new cases of COVID-19 on Jan. 25, raising the total cases to 3,459,646 cases. Of these, some 247,451 cases, or two percent, were still active. There were 79 deaths, raising the death toll to 53,596 while the number of recoveries rose to 3,158,587 cases.

The last time that the single-day tally went below the 20,000 mark was back in Jan. 6, when there were 17,220 new cases. – Janvic Mateo