DOH 'doubling efforts' after COVID-19 cases breach one-million mark —spox

The Department of Health (DOH) is doubling its efforts in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic now that the total number of cases has breached the one-million mark, its spokesperson said Tuesday.

"We're doubling our efforts," said DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire on Unang Hirit. "Whatever we have been doing in the past, we are intensifying."

Vergeire said these include improving localized response, expanding the country's health system, ramping up the testing capacity, and improving the isolation facilities.

Despite limited resources, Vergeire said the DOH has been doing these things even at the start of the pandemic.

"Since the start of the response, we have been trying to ramp up everything in the health system, yun nga lang po ang resources nakikita nating kailangang bigyang tuon ang lahat ng sektor [but we have to balance our resources to all sectors]," she said.

On Monday, the Philippines' COVID-19 tally crossed one million after the DOH recorded 8,929 new infections. The country now has a total of 1,006,428 infections.

The DOH said the new infections brought the total active cases in the country to 74,623 -- 95.4% of which were mild, 1.4% were asymptomatic, 1.3% were severe, and 1% were critical cases.

Meanwhile, the total number of recoveries climbed to 914,952 after 11,333 more patients defeated the respiratory illness. The death toll, on the other hand, rose to 16,853 with 70 new fatalities.

Vergeire, during the interview, appealed to individuals experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to quickly isolate themselves to avoid further transmission.

"So nagpapaalala po tayo sa ating mga kababayan maya't maya na kapag nakaranas na ng sintomas ay mag-isolate na po so that we can stop the transmission of the disease," she said.

Though the reproduction rate in the National Capital Region has gone down since stricter quarantine protocols were reimposed in late March, the daily attack rate remains high, according to Vergeire.

"Nakikita natin na effective yung mga ginawa natin pero kulang pa po para tayo ay talagang makapagpababa ng mga kaso, so tuloy-tuloy pa po dapat ang mga ginagawa natin," she said.

(We can see that what we've been doing has been effective so far but still not enough to really bring down the number of cases, so it must be continued.)

"Nobody should be complacent at this point," Vergeire added.  --KBK, GMA News