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DOH: Assessing Philippines' COVID-19 response goes beyond total number of cases
By NICOLE-ANNE C. LAGRIMAS, GMA NewsThe Philippines' COVID-19 response has improved, the Department of Health (DOH) said Friday following news that it is now among the 20 countries with the most number of COVID-19 cases.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said assessing how the country is faring in battling the pandemic goes beyond just the total case count and involves factors like the number of active cases, the recovery and fatality rates, and the condition of the healthcare system.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the Philippines has overtaken
Pakistan in the 20th spot for countries with the most number of people infected with the virus behind COVID-19. At the 19th spot is Italy with 314,861 cases.As of Thursday, October 1, there were 314,079 COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, according to the DOH. Most of these, or 254,223, have been tagged as recovered. More than 5,500 patients have died.
"We might be in the top 20 among all of the countries in the world with the number of cases, but when we look at our healthcare system capacity, it has improved tremendously," Vergeire said at a virtual press briefing.
She said hospitals' units for COVID-19 patients have been expanded, contact tracing efforts have become more "efficient," and the daily number of new cases has decreased compared to figures from earlier this year.
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Even so, Vergeire said the country's response has a lot of room for improvement.
"It is not really just the numbers, we have to look at the other variables," the official said. "We have to focus on the active cases and not the cumulative number of cases."
"Whatever would be this ranking across the globe, this is because of the totality of the number of cases, but when we look at the number of active cases, our recovery rate, our case fatality rate, and looking at our health system capacity we can see that we have improved and sa tingin natin nakakaagapay tayo dito sa ating response for COVID-19," she explained.
Vergeire also pointed out that the Philippines' testing capacity has increased but that authorities are still looking for it to be expanded.
She said the average turnaround time for test results is down to 48 hours, and that the backlog of laboratories nationwide is now less than 1,000.
However, she said there are still clusters of cases in some areas of the country that may have contributed to increases in the case total.—AOL, GMA News