COVID-19 pandemic: Latest situation in the Philippines – January 2022

Senator Joel Villanueva has tested positive for the coronavirus, making him the 10th Filipino senator to get infected since the pandemic started two years ago. 

In a Viber message to reporters on Friday, January 28, Villanueva said his RT-PCR test results came back positive on Thursday night, January 27. He had himself tested after experiencing fever and headache on Wednesday, January 26. 

He is now under isolation and has already informed his close contacts of his positive status.

“Dahil bakunado at boosted po tayo, at sa tulong ng panalangin sa Diyos, malaki po ang tiwala ko na malalampasan natin itong balakid na magpatuloy ang trabaho natin sa Senado (Because I am vaccinated and boosted, and with the help of prayers to our Lord, I trust that I will be able to surpass this and continue with my work in the Senate),” Villanueva said.

Villanueva is the 10th senator to test positive for COVID-19 in the past two years. Senators Aquilino Pimentel III, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Sonny Angara, Ronald dela Rosa, Bong Revilla Jr., Richard Gordon, Lito Lapid, Panfilo Lacson, and Win Gatchalian were previously infected but have all since recovered.

This week of January 24, 2022, we’re watching Omicron’s track across the country and how sewage could aid health surveillance efforts.

Coronavirus cases have started to decline in Metro Manila and some nearby provinces, while cases in the rest of Luzon were showing signs of plateauing, after weeks of tallying record infections. 

But it’s a different story for the Visayas and Mindanao, where cases have seen a sustained increase. On places to watch, the Department of Health says Western Visayas, Central Visayas, and Davao Region have the highest average of COVID-19 cases. 

Read the full outlook here.

While the Philippines and a number of countries are reeling from the surge in infections driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, an offshoot of this variant called BA.2 or “stealth Omicron” is causing much alarm in the United Kingdom, where it was found among 426 coronavirus patients so far.

The UK Health Security Agency has classified the Omircon subvariant as “variant of investigation” after preliminary studies showed that it might be both more transmissible and could evade vaccines better than other variants of the novel coronavirus.

But Philippine health officials remain calm about the Omicron subvariant, noting that initial studies suggest it’s no different from the dominant variant of Omicron now.

Read the full story here.

The Philippines now has 3,417,216 confirmed COVID-19 cases after the Department of Health (DOH) reported 29,828 new cases on Sunday, January 23.

The DOH reported 67 new deaths due to the coronavirus disease, bringing the death toll to 53,472.

Meanwhile, recoveries were up by 36,763, raising the total to 3,090,164.

Of the total cases, 273,580 or 8% are active. The DOH noted that two labs failed to submit data in time for Sunday’s bulletin.