Philippines logs 1,102 new COVID-19 cases from Jan. 30 to Feb.5 2023

The Philippines logged 1,102 new COVID-19 cases from January 30 to February 5, 2023, the latest Department of Health bulletin has indicated.

Last week's weekly tally was 16% fewer than the 1,206 new cases recorded from January 23 to 29.

The daily average of COVID-19 cases in the past week went down to 145 from the 172 daily case average the week before.

No new severe and critical cases were logged last week, the lowest in 31 reporting weeks.

It's the first time in 39 reporting weeks that there were no severe and critical cases.

Last week marked the 14th with fewer than 10,000 weekly new cases.

On Sunday, the Philippines recorded 36 new COVID-19 cases, the lowest daily total since 13 were reported on March 20, 2020—two years, 10 months, and 16 days ago near the start of the pandemic.

There were 85 additional verified COVID-19-related deaths, however, belatedly recorded from September 2020 to January 2023.

Of these deaths, 22 occurred in January 2023, five in December 2022, three in November 2022, two in March 2022, four in February 2022, 12 in January 2022, one in December 2021, two in November 2021, eight in October 2021, five in September 2021, five in August 2021, five in July 2021, three in June 2021, three in April 2021, one in March 2021, two in February 2021, one in December 2020, and one in September 2020.

Eleven of these fatalities occurred from January 23 to February 5, alone.

Vaccination, hospital updates

In addition, at least 73.8 million Filipinos, or 94.55% of the government’s target population are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to DOH.

Of these people, 11,887 completed their primary series from January 30 to February 5.

Some 6.9 million senior citizens or 79.47% of the target A2 population have also received their primary vaccine series.

Meanwhile, 21.3 million Filipinos are also now boosted, of whom 46,442 were boosted in the same period.

DOH is expecting around one million doses of bivalent COVID-19 Pfizer vaccines donated by the COVAX facility to arrive by the end of March.

One country also committed to donating additional doses to the Philippines, and the DOH is now finalizing the delivery date for such.

For this initial donated batch of bivalent vaccines, DOH said the priority will be healthcare workers, senior citizens, and people with comorbidities. Prioritization may then be expanded to other priority groups once additional doses are secured and available in the country.

DOH’s data also showed that the severe and critical cases admitted in hospitals due to COVID-19 declined to 388, as of February 5. This was 9.0% of the total COVID-19 admissions.

None of the patients were tagged as a new severe or critical case in the recent week.

At least 288 or 14.2% of the 2,030 intensive care unit (ICU) beds were also used, while 3,449 or 19.6% of the 17,627 non-ICU COVID-19 beds were occupied. —NB, GMA Integrated News