THE Department of Health (DoH) on Tuesday said the Philippines is already "over the challenge of Omicron," but it does not mean there are indications that the coronavirus pandemic will be over soon nor should the dreaded illness be considered endemic.

DoH Undersecretary and spokesman Dr. Maria Rosario Vergeire reiterated that although the country's daily Covid-19 tally continues to decline, there must not be room for complacency as the probability of a new variant emerging is still "very high" and "will always cross borders," as the virus can still mutate and there is no telling whether new mutations, if ever, will be less or severely more transmissible or deadly.

"We are not in an endemic state yet. We are in transition toward getting into that endemic state. But for now, because we are seeing that cases are declining, we are seeing that the cases are milder in characteristics compared to the Delta variant but it does not mean that we are in that endemic state already. It does not mean that there will be no variants any more that will come in the future," Vergeire said at The Manila Times online forum.

"Even though we are now transitioning our strategies from prevention toward having this new normal, we still have these safeguards in place and we still have this alert level system, which will signal to us if and when there would be an increase in cases again, we would be prepared to manage that. And we will all at once be able to impose our restrictions again," she added.

And in preparation for the transition to the "new normal," Vergeire said, the DoH, as lead agency in the government's pandemic task force, is in the thick of crafting the National Action Plan (NAP) No. 5 along with its technical working group of medical experts and other stakeholders.

A roadmap, the NAP will include the government's ten-point policy that aims to "build the confidence of individuals by reporting pandemic-related metrics; protect individuals through vaccination and expanding the health system capacity; reduce risk due to policy uncertainty through predictable policies on mobility, resuming in-person classes and risk-based travel restrictions; facilitate the shift to the new normal through digital transformation; and build resilience through the pandemic flexibility bill that will hasten government response, and a medium-term preparation for pandemic resilience," as earlier presented by the National Economic and Development Authority.

It will retain focus on the government's national vaccination program, a key initiative that Vergeire said is the country's "way out" from the health crisis as severe and critical Covid-19 cases are about two times more likely to occur among unvaccinated and not fully vaccinated individuals.

"The goal of our vaccination Is for the protection of everyone... This is our way out together with our minimum health standards. Please also get your booster doses," the Health official urged.

"The vaccines are safe and effective. These went through a very tedious process of evaluation not just from the Food and Drug Administration, but from our vaccine experts... the efficacy against severe disease and against dying has been proven," Vergeire said.