Lowest case numbers of around 500 a day being recorded in PHL with lowest hospitalization numbers, even as more Filipinos are moving around
(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte expressed satisfaction that the country’s is experiencing the lowest number of COVID-19 cases, averaging about 500 in the last few days, as experts noted that the Philippines has already achieved “substantial population immunity.
“I have always invoked the intervention of God to pull us out of this misery,” he said in his latest Talk to the People on Monday, December 5.
Duterte said that it is “a miracle” that the country’s cases is hitting new lows at this time when other countries are still reeling from the pandemic.
The Philippines has in fact recorded the biggest decrease in cases worldwide, according to an Agence France Presse report.
A US-based molecular biologist, Catholic priest Nicanor Austriaco, noted that the Philippines has already achieved substantial population immunity citing recent data.
-Duterte cites God’s help in PHL low virus cases-
“I am very happy that bumababa na talaga, duma-dive na ‘yung ano… That’s a miracle because other countries are still reeling from the effect parang nagkaroon sila ng problema sa Omicron,” Duterte said on Monday night.
The 76-year old Philippine leader is hoping that the country could cope well even if the Omicron variant enters the borders.
“So tayo, we are not hoping for the best but we pray to God that it will not come to our shores. But if ever nagdating na, we can cope up with it just as we did with COVID-19,” the President said.
-Lowest numbers in 20 months-
Dr. Austriaco said the Philippines is even faring well than the United States.
“We are experiencing the lowest case numbers in 20 months, with an average of about 500 cases per day. I would like to contrast that with here in the United States. Yesterday,we had 120,000 new cases and the United States is only three times the size of the Philippines,” he observed.
Austriaco said that what was also striking was that the Philippines was “experiencing the lowest hospitalization numbers in 20 months.”
On Monday, December 6, Makati Medical Center announced for the first time during the pandemic, they have no COVID-19 patients in their hospital, he said.
“And this is typical of many hospitals throughout our beloved country.”
-Substantial population immunity-
“But this is also interesting because we are experiencing the highest mobility in 20 months,” he said as he showed to President Duterte a graph from Apple Mobility, which showed that Filipinos have been moving around the most lately, especially in Metro Manila,” the Filipino-American molecular biologists who is currently in the US said.
All factors point to “substantial population immunity,” he said.
“What you can see is that — most — many of our people are moving around now, the most in 20 months since the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdown in March of 2020,” Austriaco pointed out.
“And so as a biologist, this is the question: we are currently with Delta, the most infectious variant in the past 20 months, the highest mobility levels in the past 20 months, more and more of our kababayans are moving around, and yet we are experiencing the lowest levels of cases and hospitalizations in 20 months,” he said.
Austriaco added: “And so what these three mean together is that it suggests that we have attained substantial population immunity from natural infections and vaccinations in the urban areas of the Philippines because the pandemic has raged and spread primarily in our cities and in our first class municipalities. And so the fact that the virus is struggling to find new Filipinos to infect, suggests that we have attained substantial population immunity.”
Austriaco who is also with OCTA research, is a professor of biology and professor of theology at Providence College, in Providence, Rhode Island, and a research fellow at the Center for Theology, Religious Studies, and Ethics, at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines.
At the start of his Talk to the People, President Duterte thanked all the doctors and health workers, as well as vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., and Health Secretary Francisco Duque III for the Philippines’ effective pandemic response that resulted in the current low numbers for COVID-19.
Duterte also thanked Dr. Austriaco for his presentation and for imparting invaluable knowledge about COVID-19 to the public. He even offered the post of Health Secretary to the scientist who is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a Bachelor of Science Engineering (B.S.E.), and then got a PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1996. Duterte said Secretary Duque, who is from UST too like Austriaco, had been telling him that he already wants to rest after the COVID-19 crisis and resign from his post.
As of Monday, December 6, the total active COVID-19 cases in the country reached only 13,548 or 0.5 percent of total cases since COVID pandemic hit the country in March last year. The COVID-19 numbers have been declining since November.
(Eagle News Service)