MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Health (DOH) confirmed 102 new coronavirus cases in the Philippines, bringing the total to 7,294 confirmed cases as of 4 pm on Saturday, April 25.

Another 17 patients succumbed to the coronavirus disease, bringing the total death toll to 494.

Meanwhile, 30 patients have also recovered, bring total recoveries to 792.

The latest number of cases is the lowest daily increase in 3 weeks, after the 76 cases recorded on April 4.

On Friday, a group of former health secretaries, experts, and a lawmaker proposed to the government a policy plan for containing COVID-19.

They recommended expanding and improving the country’s capacity to detect and test COVID-19 cases. One way to do that, the group said, was to allow the University of the Philippines Manila’s National Institutes of Health to give out biosafety certifications to laboratories capable of real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.

Certifying such laboratories is currently done only by the Department of Health’s Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.

The government, the group said, must also rationalize work shifts of healthcare frontliners, give them convenient housing as well as immunity boosters, besides providing them with personal protective equipment, training, and policies to protect them from discrimination.

Workplaces must be ready with well-established preventive and protective measures against the novel coronavirus in a modified quarantine scenario, the group said. The healthcare system must also be reoriented to respond to COVID-19 as a long-term concern.

All levels of government must come up with a way to gather real-time data on the spread of the disease. This information must be readily accessible to local governments so they can respond swiftly and appropriately, the group added. – Rappler.com