THREE persons in Iloilo City has been confirmed to be the latest infected by the Omicron subvariant BA.2.12.1, said the Department of Health.
In a virtual press briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the most recent genome sequencing results from Visayas found three residents in Iloilo with the new sublineage, two of whom had no international travel history. The other was a returning overseas Filipino from the United States.
“There is now local transmission of the Omicron subvariant [BA.2.12.1] in our country, meaning that the cases that were detected are not related to the cases from other countries. This is still not community transmission where there are widespread infections whose linkages could not be traced anymore,” Vergeire pointed out.
The DOH defines local transmission as cases in the country that have been confined in a certain area and not epidemiologically linked to those with international travel history. Community transmission, meanwhile, refers to huge clusters of infections whose source cannot be traced.
Vergeire said the health department was still verifying if the new BA.2.12.1 cases had finished their isolation and already recovered. The number of close contacts has yet to be determined, she added.
With the detection of the three new BA.2.12.1 infections, a total of 17 cases have now been recorded in the country. The first two were Metro Manila residents who had 39 colleagues as their close contacts, Vergeire said.
The remaining 12 cases were foreign visitors and one resident in Puerto Princesa City who went on a diving tour to the Tubbataha Reefs. All earlier cases, including those from Metro Manila, have been tagged as recovered, according to the health official.
