Infectious diseases and clinical pharmacology expert Dr. Benjamin Co has been thankfully breaking down coronavirus numbers in his personal blog since the outbreak started. The perspective he provides is informative, and comforting in those who are craving for a clear picture of how we are faring against the virus. Dr. Co will share daily updates and analysis of the Department of Health reported numbers with ANCX. 

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[Disclaimer: Whatever is written here is based on information released by the Department of Health (DoH) at the time of publication. Whatever changes DoH makes in their data later on…well that’s a different story in itself and as they say in their disclaimer: “the total cases reported may be subject to change as these numbers undergo constant cleaning and validation.”]

We now cross the 125,000 mark with 4,226 confirmed cases today. Almost 3,000 of the 4,226 cases actually happened from July 26 to August 8. The more than 1,000 left? Backlogs. 

NCR contributes to over 60 percent of the total with 2,669 cases.

Cebu is back in the top five aside from three other provinces from Region IVA: Laguna, Cavite, and Rizal. 

Ninety five (95) cases were removed from the total cases with no reason provided.

The Health Agency provides a tabular breakdown of the newly reported cases by region and date of onset of illness. 

The basis for the 4,226 cases today?

For the period of July 24 to August 6, there were 2,964 “cases reported by region and date of onset of illness.” 

The backlogs dated back to 975 for the period July 1 to July 25, 26 in June, 33 in May, 53 in April and an astounding 175 all the way in March!

“Of the 4,426 cases reported today, 3,476 do not have information on date of onset of illness, 316 do not have information on date of specimen collection, and 303 do not have information on both.” How this kind of disclaimer or description provides helpfulness in dissecting the data leaves me in awe. 

“In cases where date of onset of illness is missing, the date of specimen collection (minus three days) was used as proxy. In cases where both date of onset of illness and date of specimen collection are missing, the report date (minus nine days) were used as proxy.”

The number of active cases is now up at 57,559 with only 287 recoveries (or 6.8 percent of the total cases) today. I may be wrong but I think we’re the only country that’s been reporting a contraction in the recovery rate. From a previous high of 73 percent we’re now down to a low of 52.9 percent. Much lower than the global recovery rate of 64.2 percent.

There were 41 reported deaths today. And while the fatality rate is lower at 1.74 percent with total deaths at 2,209 since the start of the pandemic, let’s also remember that basic arithmetic tells you that this variable is lower because the denominator has largely increased disproportionately. 

With NCR overtaking other regions in the last three weeks, NCR now claims the most deaths with 23. Region VII reported 12, Region VI had 3, Region IVA with 2 and Region II with one death. 

Fourteen deaths occurred in August, 16 last July, 5 in June, one in May, three way back in April and two as far back as March.

Two recoveries were tagged as duplicates and were removed.

Data for August 7, 2020 (reported on August 8) show there are 100 accredited testing sites (76 RT-PCR and 24 GeneXpert laboratories) in the country. 

The Philippines has tested approximately 1.47 percent of the total population as it registers 1,606,227 individuals tested.

The 4,226 cases will be broken down in tomorrow’s report together with the week in review. 

The data yesterday

As of August 6, 2020, 1,591,000 individuals have been tested. For that day 3,290 positives were recorded from 27,732 individuals tested with reports from 85 out of 93 (91.4 percent) testing facilities. The daily positivity rate is slightly lower at 11.9 percent but the cumulative positivity rate is up at 9.8 percent.

Notice, however, in the screen capture below that the number of tests being done have gone down compared to the past weeks in spite of the increase in the number of testing facilities.

With 3,379 cases reported, the Philippines gets a reprieve from being among the top ten, with Spain, a country who has seen less cases over the last month, seeing a second wave with 4,507 cases back on the top ten list. 

NCR has now more than 66,000. Other regions in the top five are Central Visayas (17,281), Calabarzon (14,855), Central Luzon (3,479), and Western Visayas (1,784).

There are now 6,000 cases with no known region, making up five percent of the total cases reported. 

With 1,846 cases in NCR, Mega Manila owned more than 54 percent the total cases. Region IVA was in second with 834 cases (25 percent) followed by Region III with 116, Region VIII with 90 and for the first time to be in the top five, Region V with 73 cases. 

Except for Region IX that reported only nine cases, the rest of the regions reported double digits. 

There were six (0.18 percent) individuals classified as unknown on a regional level. (Good job there DoH!)

There were 89 (2.6 percent) cases from repatriates reported.

The unknowns

A total of only 36 (one percent) had no tagged location on various levels: six with no known region, while the rest had no known municipality/city. NCR had the highest number of untagged locations at 19 cases, but even that was a good number yesterday. (Fingers crossed on sustaining this.)

The known

NCR had 1,846 confirmed cases. 

Seven cities had three digits. Quezon City is back on top with 555 cases, followed by Manila, Makati, Pasig, Caloocan, Taguig, and Navotas.

Cities with double digits but more than 50 cases were: Malabon, Parañaque, Pasay and Mandaluyong. 

Cities with double digits but had 50 or less cases were: San Juan, Marikina, Valenzuela, Muntinlupa, and Pateros.

The surprise? Only Las Piñas reported single digits—4 cases—yesterday.

Among the other top regions outside of NCR, the following provinces in those regions had the highest cases: Rizal with 314 cases in Region IVA, Bulacan with 39 cases in Region III, Leyte with 47 cases in Region VIII, and Camarines Sur with 39 in Region V.

Region IVA alone contributed to 25 percent of the total cases with Rizal (314 cases), Laguna (276 cases) and Cavite (145 cases) reporting the most numbers among its provinces. 

A total of 78 cities/municipalities in Calabarzon reported cases, with Antipolo and Calamba reporting three digits.

Cities/municipalities with double digit reports were Santa Rosa, Imus, Bacoor, Cainta, Binangonan, San Pedro, Taytay, Rodriguez (Montalban), Mauban, Biñan, Cabuyao, Carmon, Lucena, and Angono. 

The rest had single digit with four cases with no tagged location on a city/municipality level.

Bulacan, Bataan, Pampanga and Nueva Ecija saw double digits in cases per province. San Jose del Monte (in Bulacan) had the most number (18) of cases reported out of 48 cities/municipalities in Region III with cases.

Region VIII that came fourth had single digit cases among the 36 cities/municipalities with reports. There was one case with no tagged location on this level.

For the first time, Bicol Region is in the top five with Naga reporting 13 cases. The rest of the 27 cities/municipalities with reported cases were all single digit.

As of yesterday, the seven-day average for cases in the Philippines was at 4,212 cases/day while that for deaths at 20 deaths/day.

The world

The total number of cases reported yesterday is up at more than 280,000 mark once more driving the seven-day average to close to 260,000 new cases/day. 

There were 6,372 deaths reported bringing the seven-day global death average to more than 5,800 deaths/day.

The global case fatality rate is lower at 3.7 percent and recoveries remain at 64.2 percent. [Recovery rates are not very reliable indicators because they are subjective based on the country’s definition of how and when they consider patients “recovered.” There are some countries also that do not count recoveries like the U.K and Denmark. Death rates on the other hand, while more definitive of outcomes take a longer time to report and validate.]

Data from WorldOMeters.info.

The United States has passed the five million cases mark with California, Florida and Texas having the most cases. The US recorded the most number of cases in the world with 63,246 new cases and the most number of deaths with 1,290 deaths yesterday. 

Brazil remains in second with close to three million total cases with close to 50,000 new cases yesterday. 

India remains in third with close to 2.1 million cases from 61,455 additional new cases yesterday. 

Colombia now replaces Spain for the ninth spot and is set to overtake Chile for the 8th position tomorrow.

The top ten countries with the highest number of cases yesterday were:

• USA – 63,246
• India – 61,455
• Brazil – 49,502
• Colombia – 9,486
• Peru – 8,466
• Argentina – 7,482
• South Africa – 7,292
• Mexico – 6,590
• Russia – 5,241
• Spain – 4,507

Spain is featured today as among one of the countries that is seeing a second wave. Aside from countries like Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Singapore and more, it is a fact that together with the opening up of the economy is the travail of living with the virus.

No form of lockdown will address the continuing rise and decline of cases in the Philippines and in the world. We will see countries win a day and lose tomorrow. 

All the best plans should now be toward working at opening the economy during a pandemic, with minimal harm to health. This is one war we can all win if we work as one.