Duque retracts minutes after saying Philippines “flattening the curve” on COVID-19 cases

July 15, 2020

Minutes after saying that the Philippines has flattened the curve on coronavirus cases, Health Secretary Francisco Duque clarified that what he meant was that the government was able to "bend" the epidemic curve.

In the pre-SONA (State of the Nation Address) aired over state-run PTV4 on Wednesday, Duque initially said the government has "successfully flattened the curve since April."

"The metrics for saying arriving at that conclusion of flattening the curve is, one, case doubling time of the COVID-19 infection has actually become longer. It used to have a very short case doubling time of 2.5 days during the initial phase of pandemic," he said.

"The other metric to say that we have flattened the curve is also the mortality doubling time has also got longer and is now in the moderate risk classification," Duque added.

But towards the end of the question and answer during the pre-SONA briefing, Duque apologized for his earlier statement on flattening the curve.

"I just want to clarify my statement earlier regarding what I have said in the pre-SONA on flattening the curve. Our case doubling time last April passed through to what we call as three-day doubling time. Now, July 15, the case doubling time went down to eight days. This has surpassed our seven-day doubling time," he said.

"This means, we have bent or curved the epidemic curve in April after the imposition of the ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) on March 17," he explained.

Duque attributed the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases on expanded testing.

He added that there is a rise in the community transmission because of the relaxation of quarantine measures, allowing more movement of the people.

"This is expected as we open up the economy and lift our community quarantine measures," he said, citing that similar trend is occurring in other countries, such as Japan, which also has opened up their economy after the lockdown.

Duque stressed that what is important is to maintain the coronavirus cases at "manageable levels...levels that the system and our healthcare workers are not overwhelmed."

He reiterated the need of the people to practice minimum health protocols to contain the spread of the virus.

"I apologize for the confusion brought by my earlier statement. I was just confused on the question," Duque added.

The Health chief previously also retracted his statement when he said in a Senate hearing that the country was already on the second wave of COVID-19. His statement was debunked by some Cabinet officials, including some health experts. Celerina Monte/DMS