MANILA, Philippines — Health Undersecretary and Spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire said Saturday that the government should properly study the effects of lifting the state of calamity brought about by the onset of COVID-19, as it will have implications on policies related to the pandemic.
"There are many operational implications if we lift the state of calamity because there are policies, such as the emergency use authority of vaccines and medicines for COVID-19 which will be affected," Vergeire said Filipino during a Laging Handa briefing on Saturday.
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The Department of Health official added that the benefits of public and private medical workers are also tied to such status.
"There is a need for the government to study this well," she said.
Vergiere noted they are also closely monitoring the infections, citing projections of experts who said the waning immunity of the population amid the low uptake of booster jabs may raise hospitalization rates this August.
This even as 15 out of 17 regions across the country have reported cases that were deemed as "low-risk."
On Friday, the Health department announced that it detected the first cases of the more infectious Omicron BA.5 subvariant. It was detected in two people from the same households in Central Luzon. Both were immediately isolated until May 30, and have now recovered and are asymptomatic from the virus.
The Philippines logged an additional 225 COVID-19 cases on June 3, raising the total caseload to 3.69 million since the start of the pandemic, according to records from DOH.