For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases

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.

[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.”]

The Philippines was the seventh biggest contributor to the pool of coronavirus cases in the world yesterday with close to 5,000 cases.

Today, we have 4,650 confirmed cases from 97 out of 105 labs. Our total now stands at 173,744 total cases number 22 in the world and trailing close to Iraq.

Of today’s confirmed cases, more than 83 percent (from a previous 80 percent yesterday) are from National Capital Region (NCR), Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, and Bulacan. NCR alone contributes to more than 66 percent of the total cases in the country with 3,092 reported.

The number of active cases are up at 57,498 (33.1 percent of the total) with 716 recoveries reported.

The number of severe and critically ill are at 2.1 percent, but the active cases are more.

Eight nine cases were removed from the total with no reason provided.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 3

Based on “date of onset of illness” of the 4,650 cases today, 3,484 were between August 6 to 19 (82.7 percent).

The backlogs from August 1-5, 2020 were 237 cases, while the month of July has suddenly ballooned to 444 today (from 278 cases yesterday).

NCR and Region IVA continue to account for the larger share of the backlog.

Removing the backlogs would put NCR at 2,576 cases and Region IVA at 574 for the week of

August 6 to August 19. Two regions report three digits today: Central Luzon with 140 total cases and Western Visayas with 156 cases.

“Of the 4,650 cases reported today, 3,990 (85.8 percent) do not have information on date of onset of illness, 292 do not have information on date of specimen collection, while 278 do not have information on both.” (Yet the Department of Health insists on using the Date of Onset of Illness for reporting for a reason that will need enlightenment.)

“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.”

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 4

There were 716 recoveries (with 69 cases being removed from the recoveries) bringing down the recovery rate from 66.7 percent yesterday to 64.9 percent today. Our recovery rate is now lower than the global recovery rate (again). And we probably will see this trend in recoveries until there is another clean-up drive.

There were 111 reported deaths: 52 from NCR, 29 from Central Visayas, 11 from Region IVA, 6 from Central Luzon, four from Zamboanga Peninsula, two from Western Visayas and one each from Regions V, XI, and BARMM. For the first time, there are four deaths from repatriates.

Of the 111 deaths, 76 occurred in August (68.5 percent), 13 in July, 8 in June, 9 in May and 5 as far back as April.

Two cases reported as a death was removed from the list of patients and deaths. This now brings our case fatality rate up at 1.61 percent (from 1.59 percent yesterday).

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 5

Testing data for August 18, reported on August 19 shows 109 licensed testing facilities (82 RT-PCR and 27 GeneXpert) in the country. So far, we have tested 1,992,128 individuals (1.83 percent of the population).

Our cumulative positivity rate is now at 10.4 percent, which means that we’re still not testing enough. And there are more cases out there left undetected.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 6

The data yesterday

As of August 16, 2020, (based on the website of the COVID19 trackers of the Department of Health), 1,948,932 individuals have been tested. But this is an update of the same announcement, but at a different time frame. In the updated time frame (which I think they should indicate right below the date) is that there were 3,287 positives from 25,312 individuals tested. The daily positive rate was at 12.8 percent with a cumulative positivity rate of 10.4 percent.

According to the announcement of the Health Agency on the daily numbers, there were 1,956,496 total individuals tested. So we’re guessing that that data has not been uploaded yet.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 7

Based on the uploaded data from the Health Agency’s tracker (not all the recently accredited testing sites have been uploaded in the website), the testing capacity for August 16 shows NCR owning the bulk of cases. Both NCR and Region IVA have higher daily positivity rates.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 8

With 4,836 cases reported yesterday, close to 80 percent were from NCR and CALABARZON alone. NCR reported 2,959 cases (61.2 percent) while Region IVA had 878 (18.2 percent).

Other regions with three digit reports were Central Luzon (324), Western Visayas (118), and Central Visayas (101).

There were 174 cases from Repatriates bringing now the total cases for this group to 7,832. In terms of most number of cases in the country, the repatriates are the fourth greatest contributor to the total.

Two regions reported single digits: Caraga and BARMM.

There were five cases with no tagged location on a regional level.

NCR had close to 95,000 cases yesterday and is on track to meet 100,000 total cases within the next two days at the least with 2,959 cases reported yesterday.

The top five regions for August 18, 2020 were NCR, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, Western Visayas, and Central Visayas.

Only nine cases had no identifiable location by region.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 9

The unknown

There were 129 unknowns (2.67 percent) with no tagged location on various levels: five no known region, with the remaining having no tagged locations at the municipality/city level. NCR had the most individuals with untagged location with 67.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 10

The known

Over 60 percent of cases were from NCR alone with 67 (2.3 percent) having no tagged location.

Thirteen cities reported triple digits with Quezon City taking back the lead with 445 cases followed by Manila with 359, Makati with 269, Malabon with 224, and Caloocan with 201.

The rest of the cities with more than 100 but less than 200 cases were Taguig, Pasay, Pasig, Navotas, Valenzuela, Parañaque, Muntinlupa, and Mandaluyong.

Cities with double digits and more than 50 cases were San Juan, Marikina, and Pateros.

The only city with 50 and less cases was Las Piñas.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 11

Among the remaining four top regions, the following provinces had the highest cases in the respective region: Laguna with 321 cases for Region IVA, Bulacan with 145 cases for Region III, Iloilo with 60 cases for Region VI and Cebu is back in fifth with 90 cases for Region VII.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 12

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 13

Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, and Batangas alone contributed to 97 percent of the cases in Region IVA.

For the first time a city in Region IVA reported triple digits—Calamba reported 101 cases.

Twenty-two cities/municipalities reported double digits. Imus (71), Cabuyao (61) and Santa Rosa (58) reported more than 50 cases.

Fifty-five cities/municipalities had single digit cases.

There were 44 cases with no tagged location on a city/municipality level.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 14

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 15

Region III had 324 cases, with five cases having no tagged location on a city/municipality level.

Ten cities reported double digits: San Jose del Monte, Mabalacat, San Fernando, Meycauayan, Santa Maria, Marilao, Malolos, Angeles, Mariveles and Guagua.

Fifty-eight cities/municipalities in Central Luzon reported single digit cases.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 16

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 17

Region VI is back in fourth position with Iloilo reporting 34 cases and Bacolod with 23.

There were two cases with no tagged location at this level.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 18

Region VII reported three digits yesterday with 101 total cases. Cebu City reported 36 cases while the rest of the cities/municipalities were single digit. There were four cases with no tagged location at this level.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 19

The seven-day average for cases hover at 4,000 to 4,300 cases/day with seven-day average for deaths around 50-60 deaths/day.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 20

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 21

The world

The world is now more than 22.3 million mark in number of confirmed coronavirus cases.

There were more than 240,000 cases reported yesterday bringing the seven-day average still above 250,000 cases/day or approximately 1,000,000 cases ever four days. Deaths reported yesterday was only 1,293 deaths but the seven-day average is still around 5,400 plus deaths/day.

The global case fatality rate stays at 3.52 percent and recoveries at 67.5 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.]

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 22

Data from WorldOMeters.info.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 23

The United States surpasses the 5.65 million cases mark with Texas, California and Florida reporting the top three cases yesterday.

Brazil remained in second with more than three million cases, but has been seeing a slight downward trend from new daily confirmed cases in the past week with a seven-day average of around 43,000 cases/day. Brazil reported the highest number of deaths yesterday.

India remains in third spot globally, but continues to have the highest number of new confirmed daily cases. Yesterday, it reported 65,022 cases.

For the first time, a city in Calabarzon—Calamba—tallies triple digits in new COVID cases 24

The top 10 countries contributing to the pool of cases yesterday were:

India – 65,022
Brazil – 48,637
USA – 43,999
Colombia – 12,462
Peru – 7,828
Argentina – 6,840
Philippines – 4,836
Russia – 4,748
Iraq – 4,576
Mexico – 3,571

Day one of GCQ and we have 111 deaths, 4,650 confirmed cases with two-thirds of the cases in NCR alone.

It is actually NCR, Calabarzon, and Bulacan that is the driving force and the main concern of the healthcare system capacity today. We really need to take extra steps at working at decreasing the number of cases in the highly congested and dense community called Mega Manila.

Whatever plans there are for Mega Manila, we hope we get it right this time around. Otherwise, herd immunity will take a natural and deadly course.