MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines needs to ramp up its vaccination efforts amid early signs of another surge in COVID-19 infections, an epidemiologist with the government’s inter-agency task force said Monday.
Dr. John Wong, a member of the IATF technical working group for data analytics, said there have been case increases since May 18 but the rises have not been sustained.
“If we look back longer to mid-February, that was the end of the Omicron wave so we had decreasing or flat cases. But this increase in cases over the past month is worrying because it shows that more transmission is taking place,” Wong said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.
The founder of health research firm EpiMetrics stressed the need for the government to accelerate the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations.
“Since mid-February, we’ve only increased about 6% in terms of vaccination rate. Only about 20% of eligible adults have boosters, and I think only 10% of children have had their vaccinations,” Wong said, adding that senior citizens and people with comorbidities need to be protected against the virus.
Over 69 million people in the country have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Of those who completed their primary series, only 13.8 million have gotten booster shots.
Wong also emphasized that the public should focus on factors that contribute to surges such as the virus, people’s behavior, and environment. He added that ventilation must be improved to keep virus transmission low.
Last week, the Department of Health reported that the daily average from May 16 to 22 was 173 COVID-19 cases, 9.9% higher than the cases logged in the previous week. It recently detected cases of the more transmissible sub-variants of Omicron such as BA.2.12.1 and BA.4.
Despite the increase in cases, Wong said the country is “still in a good place in terms of hospitalizations.”
The DOH has recorded more than 3.68 million COVID-19 infections since the pandemic started in 2020, with 60,455 deaths.