Ex-health secretary says COVID-19 ”could be worse”

September 11, 2020

Former Health Secretary  Manuel Dayrit said while the COVID- 19 situation in the country has been averaging around 3,000 to 4,000 cases daily, but it could have been been worse.

“You know, we've not controlled it. If that is another  way of saying it is out of control, I'm just nuancing it because out of control means that is totally nothing to slow it down. What I am saying is we are trying to control it but we're not able to control it and that's why it's an upward curve ...and we're averaging 3,000 to 4,000 cases a day being reported,” he said during the virtual forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) on Friday.

''I guess the answer there is it could be worse,'' added Dayrit. '' But certainly if your benchmark are countries like Thailand or Vietnam,  we are not doing as well as them.''

In his presentation, Dayrit emphasized that Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand have been able to suppress the transmission of COVID-19 .

The difference between the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the current situation is that the country has been able to prevent ''community spread,'' said Dayrit, the health secretary during that period.

Dayrit said business ''had stopped for at least a month''but we were able to prevent community spread. ''With COVID-19, community spread gone of control and propagated,'' he said.

He said in 2003, the balance between health and economy ''lasted only for a month.'' ''Here it is ongoing. That's the major difference, the fact that we had community spread,'' he said.

''Until we can say we've had relatively good suppression, which means cases are going down, it's going to be an effort to gain the public trust and that is what private sector is trying to do that we have to strict on minimum health standards'' he said.

Dayrit said mitigating the effects of COVID-19 is important now.

“It’s too late to stop community transmission here. What we can only do now is to… work  on mitigation, I don’t know if we're able to suppress it given the nature of it and the nature of geography…,” he added.

On the other hand, Dayrit expressed belief that the country will be able to win the war against the coronavirus pandemic with minimum casualties.

“We have to keep positive. I think were able to eventually beat this over time but we want to beat it in a way that we want to minimize casualties. So we have to assess our risk, help each other prevent infection from spreading and in the end I think we’re going to win this,” he said. Robina Asido/DMS