Eastern Visayas had the highest growth rate of COVID cases in the past week
Jun 21 2020
Data as of June 21, 2020, 8 P.M.
With 653 cases today (415 fresh and 238 late) the fresh cases predominate in the National Capital Region with 219 new confirmed cases while among the late cases, Region VII hauls in 177 cases.
Overall total cases (fresh or late) still goes to Region VII for the second consecutive day with 266 cases (40.7 percent). NCR follows with 251 total new cases (38.4 percent) and the “others” at 136 total cases.
While there are more fresh cases than late cases (again) the past days has seen a 60-40 share of fresh versus late. I would have expected that with the three days delineation of fresh versus late classification of cases, we would, by now, have seen a larger bulk of fresh cases over late.
Of the remaining 20,600 active cases, 99.6 percent of them are mild (19,963 or 96.9 percent) or asymptomatic (550 or 2.7 percent). There are 69 severe (0.3 percent) and 18 critical (0.1 percent).
There are 19 deaths reported today, 15 (79 percent) of which occurred in June. The Department of Health provides a summary of the deaths in June in the graph below. They note that “the national trend continues to see deaths decline and of the 194 deaths in June (12 percent), 23 were from Cebu Province.”
The graph on deaths by date of death had some data with proxy. Proxy in data analytics and machine learning may pose discrimination and bias in the outcome of the data. Choosing proxy variables is subjective and while the Health Agency does not explain what proxy variables it chose to arrive at this extrapolation, hopefully, they are weak variables.
Case fatality rate drops further to 3.89 percent with recovery rates up at 26.3 percent. The very slow recovery rate is probably due to validation at the local government level that waits for two consecutive negative swabs after testing positive before it recognizes an individual as “recovered.” It is also likely that the data at the LGU level is inadequate perhaps due to incomplete patient identification(s) at the time of testing.
The day before
Of the 943 cases yesterday, 444 were from Region VII, 280 from the NCR, 30 from Calabarzon (Region IVA) and 11 from Region VI. A total of 146 cases were for validation.
Among the 280 cases in the NCR, Manila had the most cases (+34) followed by Quezon City (+28), Pasig (+14), Caloocan (+13), and 10 cases each for Marikina and Taguig. Two cities had no recorded cases yesterday: Muntinlupa and San Juan. One hundred twenty seven cases were for validation/unknown.
Of the 20 deaths reported yesterday, two were from NCR while 18 from region Region VII.
Manila reported one death while the other death had no identified city.
Region VII had its worst day yesterday with 444 cases both fresh and late. Cebu City had the majority with 229 cases (and 11 deaths). Cebu province had 88 cases (and seven deaths), Mandaue with 687 cases, Lapu-Lapu with 42 cases while 11 are unknown.
Region IVA reported the third highest cases per region with 30 cases. These were from Rizal (+16), Cavite (+8), Laguna (+4) and two unknown.
Region VI reported 11 cases. They were from Bacolod (+5), Iloilo province (+3), Capiz (+2), and Iloilo city (+1).
In terms of testing, we are now at more than 580,000 tests with 15,000+ tests done overnight. The positivity rate remains at 6.9 percent in 13,800 individuals tested as of June 19, 2020 (5,299 tests/1M population).
As of today, there are 46 licensed RT-PCR laboratories and 17 licensed Gene-Expert Labs accredited to do confirmatory testing in the Philippines.
The results vary according to the facility and below is the list of the facilities with > 10 percent positivity rate. Those highlighted in yellow show the highest positive rates. Note that all the testing facilities in Region VII show not only >10 percent positivity rates but a continuous increase in positive rates daily. While the positivity rate at Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital has slightly declined, Caloocan remains one of the higher number of cases in the NCR. You can explore more of the various facilities in the in the new Covid19Tracker.
The week in review
It was a roller coaster ride the last week and the graphs below show how we rode that wave. Daily confirmed deaths were generally up. New confirmed cases remained almost the same over the whole week averaging 700+ cases/day, there was an increase in testing in the last few days of the week, and the case fatality rate (the only good news) continues to decline.
Region VII and Region VIII had their worst week with a spike in cases from these region in the Visayas. It was Region VIII that showed the worst seven-day average growth rate at 20 percent and a doubling time of three to four days. NCR retains a seven day average growth rate of 1.58 percent with 44 days doubling time.
Using 28,459 data points, the demographics show that based on age group, 7.78 percent are those 0-19 years old while 16.5 percent are > 60 years of age.
Fatality rate is higher also in the 60 years old and up at 58.6 percent, while the pediatric age group sees a fatality rate of 2.4 percent. What is striking this week is that there is a rise in fatality rates for those between 50-59 years old at 4.7 percent.
Let’s hope for a better week ahead because this week did not show any signs of this virus abating anytime soon. It’s not only the economy that is taking a beating and in peril, but the paranoia that the virus has created is posing a lot of stress and psychological trauma.
As the second quarter comes to a close next week, the data can only show the resiliency of this virus and a pandemic that has been difficult to contain in spite of more advance resources at our disposal.
[Disclaimer: All data are verified based on the Data Drop of the Department of Health. All information used in the analysis are from the Health Agency’s data drop site.
