Philippines records no increase in severe, critical cases —DOH

There is no increase in the number of severe and critical cases admitted in hospitals nationwide over the past days, the Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire made the remark when asked over the increase of severe and critical cases among the active tally nationwide from November 14 to November 24.

Of the 28,102 active cases on November 14, 10.5% are severe and 4.5% were in critical condition. This increased to 14.4% and 6.0%, respectively, on November 24 among 17,864 active cases.

“Unang-una, walang pagtaas ng severe at critical cases among our monitoring of the different hospitals in the country,” Vergeire said in a live briefing.

(First of all, there’s no increase in the severe and critical cases among our monitoring of the different hospitals in the country.)

The Health undersecretary said the supposed increase is due to the lower number of active cases.

“What’s happening right now, unang-una, because bumababa po ang ating active cases, so definitely it’s a function of the number, tumataas ang porsyento ng mga severe and critical dahil nga po lumiit na ‘yung ating denominator,” Vergeire said.

(What’s happening right now is because of our lower active cases, so it’s a function of the number, the percentage of severe and critical will increase because the denominator decreased.)

Vergeire also stressed that the reporting of severe and critical cases is not included in the time-based tagging, where mild, asymptomatic, and moderate cases are tagged as recovered after 14 days.

“Pagkatapos natin sila i-time based recovery, darating ang LGU validation, nagkakaroon tayo ng re-confirmation (after we categorized them under time-based recovery, the LGUs will validate for the reconfirmation),” Vergeire said.

“Dito… hindi natin naisama ang severe and critical because we wanted to make sure na ospital ang magsasabi sa atin na they have recovered (we did not include the severe and critical here because we wanted the hospitals to say that they have recovered),” she added.

The health undersecretary said the DOH is now coordinating with local government units to fast-track the validation of severe and critical cases.

“Naiiwan po sila doon sa database, when in fact, when we started validating from the DOH side, nakita namin marami na sa mga taong 'to, recovered na pala, hindi nasa-submit ang report. So this is a function of reporting naman,” she said.  

(They are left at the database when, in fact, when we started validating from the DOH side, we saw that many of them have recovered but the reports have not yet been submitted. So this is a function of reporting.)—AOL, GMA News