Philippines not alone in recording spikes of COVID-19 cases – Palace

August 5, 2020

The Philippines is not alone in recording continuous surge of coronavirus disease cases as other countries have been experiencing the same trend, Malacañang said on Wednesday.

In an interview by CNN Philippines, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque cited reports that the virus has mutated and has become far more infectious than it was.

But he said the reports have not been confirmed yet by Philippine authorities.

"Well, we are not alone; it's not as if it's just happening in the Philippines," he said.

The Department of Health reported on Tuesday 6,352 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total cases in the Philippines to 112,593. Death toll was at 2,115 while 66,049 have recovered.

While there have been spikes in coronavirus cases, Roque, however, noted that mortality rate remains to be "very low" and an "overwhelming" cases continue to be asymptomatic or mild.

"So, although there are deaths, we are keeping the deaths at a minimum. We’re way within the threshold of 5 percent mortality rate considered as acceptable by the international community, we are at two point something right now as far as mortality rate is concerned," he said.

Roque said the government is expanding its capacity to provide critical care, including building of more ICU beds and isolation facilities as actual testing capacity has reached the target of 32,000 per day.

"So, we are taking steps to revitalize out T3 (test, trace and treat).  As I said, we are not stopping at the 32,000 actual tests that we have achieved," he said, citing the "pooled" testing to be tried in Makati City starting this week.

"And with this increased testing capacity, it’s also understandable that we have increased number of case being reported because that is precisely the reason why we want to test more – to find out where the virus is, isolate the virus, treat them and trace," he added. Celerina Monte/DMS