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As the Philippines reached the grim milestone of one million COVID-19 cases, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the public should look at it through a “more optimistic lens.”
“The one million cases can be viewed also from a different angle, that this will sooner than later reach a million recoveries,” Duque said in an interview with CNN Philippines’ The Source.
“We have to look at it from a more optimistic lens of getting a high recovery rate of more than 90%,” he added.
Duque said the nation should now focus on how to improve its pandemic response. “There are always ways to do things better,” he said.
Despite global assessments that showed that the Philippines lags behind other countries, especially its Southeast Asian counterparts, in terms of pandemic response, the government claimed that it was doing an “excellent” job in handling the health crisis.
On Monday, April 26, total caseload in the country reached 1,006,428 after 8,929 new COVID-19 infections were reported.
In the same interview, Duque also said that even though the country has a cumulative one million cases, active cases or those who are currently sick are just around 70,000.
“What is important now is that we continue to see that active cases are about 75,000 to 77,000 in all, 96% are mild and asymptomatic. The remaining are moderate, and severe to critical cases are at 1% of the active cases,” he said.
A year into the pandemic, the Philippines is still struggling to contain the spread of COVID-19. For the past days, the country has been logging around 7,000 COVID-19 new infections daily. On April 2, the country’s daily caseload was at its highest with 15,310 infections.
As of Tuesday, the Philippines has 1,013,618 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 16,916 deaths and 925,027 recoveries.
Duque on Monday said that he supports a proposal to extend implementing the second strictest form of coronavirus lockdown in Metro Manila and 4 surrounding provinces for one to two more weeks.
He said that extending the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) in Metro Manila, Rizal, Cavite, Bulacan, and Laguna – an area called “NCR Plus” – can help decongest hospitals in these areas.
“NCR Plus” is under MECQ until Friday, April 30. President Rodrigo Duterte is expected to decide on the quarantine classifications on Wednesday, April 28. – Rappler.com
Read this two-part series on the COVID-19 surge in the country:
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