MANILA, Philippines — The risk level of the Philippines for COVID-19 has returned to low after a record-breaking surge in infections last month, the Department of Health said.
In a briefing aired late Monday, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said the country was deemed low risk for virus spread after registering a two-week growth rate of -74% and an average daily attack rate of 5.26 cases per 100,000 population.
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Thirteen regions, including Metro Manila, were also at low risk. The capital region and other areas will remain under Alert Level 2 until the end of February.
Only Davao region, Cordillera Administrative Region, Western Visayas and Soccsksargen were at moderate risk.
Duque also said the healthcare utilization rates in the country and most of its regions were at low risk. Only the intensive care unit occupancy of Davao region remained at moderate risk.
“We are able to manage our cases and our health systems capacity is very much prepared for any eventuality the number of cases increases, we have a lot of excess and our utilization rates are low,” he said.
Cases reached unprecedented highs in January following the detection of the hyper-contagious Omicron variant.
The Philippines has reported 3.6 million COVID-19 infections since the start of the pandemic, with 55,000 deaths.