The DOH is seeing a possible rise in COVID-19 cases due to the declining compliance of Filipinos to minimum public health standards, warning that a 50% decrease in this compliance may lead to nearly “half a million” active infections in NCR by mid-May.
While the country may have seen lower number of cases from March to April, Filipinos have been complying less with the MPHS—seven percent less nationwide and by 12 percent less in the NCR—during the same period, according to the Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered with Vaccination and Reinfection model used by the sub-Technical Working Group on Data Analytics and the Feasibility Analysis of Syndromic Surveillance using Spatio-temporal Epidemiological Modeler for Early Detection of Diseases...
The DOH cited disease models which showed that a 20-percent decrease in MPHS compliance nationwide could result in 34,788 active cases in mid-May, 564 of which are severe while 267 are critical. “This figure is higher than the largest recorded number of active cases at 291,618 during the peak of the Omicron wave in January 2022,” it added.“Within NCR, estimates showed that a 50% decrease in MPHS compliance may lead to around 25,000 to 60,000 new cases per day, bringing the number of NCR active cases to almost half a million by mid-May – more than three times higher than the active cases during the Omicron wave’s peak,” the DOH warned.