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DOH confirms drop in daily Philippine COVID-19 cases


The Department of Health on Thursday confirmed that the number of Philippine daily COVID-19 cases is decreasing.

“We are confirming that the cases are declining,” Health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a Palace briefing.

Earlier, Vergeire reported that new cases in National Capital Region Plus areas and Luzon were decreasing.

However, she said that the DOH must assess if this reflected a true decline or if it was affected by other factors, such as the decline in the number of RT-PCR tests conducted across the country.

“That was what we did. We got all the factors, we identified all the factors, and we tried to analyze kung talagang kumpirmado po that the decline of cases is not affected by any other factor at ito po ay totong pagbaba (actual decline),” she said.

Also, Vergeire said the decrease in laboratory outputs was largely affected by the use of antigen tests.

“Pangalawa, nakita din po natin na with this decrease in test outputs na meron tayo, ‘yung positivity rate natin bumababa pa rin, that’s second,” she said.

(Secondly, we saw that the decrease in test outputs also shows a decrease in positivity rate.)

Moreover, she said that the DOH observed a decrease in hospital admissions.

However, she said this should not be a reason to be complacent, as hospital utilization rates remain high.

“Although 68% lang ang ating ICU utilization ngayon, kailangan pa rin natin pag-ingatan na matuloy maibaba at ma-decongest ang ating mga ospital so that we can move on and open up some sectors in our economy,” she said.

(Although the ICU utilization rate is at 68%, we need to be careful so we can further decongest hospitals, so we can move on and open up some sectors in our economy.)

In the past two days, the Philippines reported less than 10,000 new COVID-19 cases daily.

Earlier, the OCTA Research group announced that cases per day in NCR could go below 1,000 by the end of October as the reproduction number further decreased to 0.67. —LBG, GMA News

 

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