THE country will continue to observe the Alert Level System amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic until restrictions that are compatible with the current milder strains that afflict patients are being reclassified, Malacañang said Tuesday, July 19, 2022.On Monday, July 18, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. met again with health officials, including Department of Health (DOH) officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire, to discuss the country’s Covid-19 response.“To avoid confusion, we will retain the alert level system for now. We are however thinking, we are studying very closely, and we’ll come to a decision very soon as to decoupling the restrictions from the alert levels,” Marcos said during the meeting.Vergeire said the DOH targets to come up with new classification by the second week of August, the period suitable to loosen up to allay fears of the medical community and give them time to make Covid-19 cases more manageable.Earlier, Joey Concepcion, founder of Go Negosyo, said the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC), which was formed by Marcos, recommended the shift to a traffic light restriction scheme to make restrictions easier for the public to understand.He said the traffic light approach only includes three classifications – green, which means go as cases are low; red, which means stop as cases are high; and yellow, which means be careful or vigilant as cases are increasing.Concepcion said they also recommended several metrics to consider for the lifting of the mandatory wearing of face masks.Vergeire said the country is experiencing an increase in Covid-19 cases due to the more transmissible Omicron BA.5 subvariant.She said cases may continue to rise if the public will be complacent against the observance of public health standards.On Monday, the DOH recorded 2,285 fresh Covid-19 cases, the new highest single-day tally since February, when the country experienced a surge due to the Omicron variant, the most transmissible but less infectious variant of Sars-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19.The Philippines now has a total of 20,524 active cases.The DOH said average daily cases over the past week were at 2,091, 44 percent higher than the average daily cases logged during the previous week.“With the emergence of new Covid-19 variants, the virus’ immune-escaping mechanism also increased. Experts project that if eligible individuals do not take the jabs, the country will witness increased hospitalizations by September,” said Vergeire.“So that’s why we really wanted to capture all of this eligible population bago dumating ‘yung time na projection na sinasabing September,” she added.As of July 18, 71,322,848 individuals or 91.32 percent of the government’s target population are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Among them were 267,096 senior citizens, who belong to the vulnerable population.The number of those who got their booster doses is still low at 15,592,533. (SunStar Philippines)