Monday, March 22, 2021

DOH: Virus variants driving case surge. Inquirer Newsletter. March 23, 2021.

BORDER CHECK A policeman assigned to a checkpoint at the boundary of Calamba City in Laguna and the City of Santo Tomas in Batangas checks motorists and travelers as the government restricts movement of people within a quarantine “bubble” composed of Metro Manila and the four nearby provinces of Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna. Movement within the metropolis and surrounding provinces in Central Luzon and Calabarzon regions will be regulated for two weeks due to a spike in COVID-19 infections. –LYN RILLON

Regions

Baguio bars tourists from Metro Manila, 4 Luzon provinces

Leisure travelers from Metro Manila and four provinces in Luzon have been barred again from visiting the summer capital starting Monday due to fresh spikes in new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in these areas, Mayor Benjamin Magalong said. —STORY BY Tina Arceo-Dumlao

Lifestyle Wellness

Eat, sleep, train, repeat: Rovilson Fernandez’s secrets to staying healthy

Rovilson Fernandez is back in the United States, to spend quality time with his parents and family in California. “This pandemic has highlighted what is truly important, and for me, that’s family,” he says.

—STORY BY Pam Pastor

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Banner Story

DOH: Virus variants driving case surge

By Dona Z. Pazzibugan

The Department of Health (DOH) on Monday said two highly contagious variants of the coronavirus had been detected in all cities in Metro Manila and these may be driving the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in the metropolis in the past few weeks.

The DOH said it was waiting for confirmation from the World Health Organization (WHO) of widespread community transmission of the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the United Kingdom and the B.1.351 variant first reported by South Africa late last year.

Global increase in cases

But WHO representative to the Philippines Rabindra Abeyasinghe, speaking in a televised briefing on Monday, did not attribute the flare-up solely to the variants but also to vaccine optimism that had led to people letting their guard down.

Abeyasinghe said the WHO had been seeing a global increase in COVID-19 cases in the past four weeks.

“After a stabilization of transmission in January and early February, we have seen now that globally, in several countries, we are seeing an increase in transmission,” Abeyasinghe said. The increase has also been seen in countries that have had successful vaccine rollouts so the situation cannot just be blamed on slow government response, he said.

But in addition to a change in people’s behavior, the increase in cases, he said, can also be linked to the spread of the new variants of the coronavirus.

“So the mix of these factors could actually be causing higher levels of transmission in the Philippines also,” Abeyasinghe said.

The DOH conceded that the presence of the highly transmissible variants in Metro Manila is a factor in the faster increase in daily cases than at the height of the pandemic in July and August last year. —WITH REPORTS FROM LEILA B. SALAVERRIA, ROY STEPHEN C. CANIVEL AND DELFIN MALLARI JR. INQ

Editorial

Moment of reckoning

President Duterte angrily called for the Philippines' withdrawal from the ICC in March 2018, a month after ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the court was opening a preliminary examination (the first stage before a formal investigation) following reports of extrajudicial killings in police anti-drug operations.

Read full story: opinion.inquirer.net