Duque: COVID-19 ‘fresh’ cases not related to shift to GCQ

MANILA, Philippines — The number of “fresh” cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the country is not related to the easing of nationwide quarantine protocols, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Tuesday.

“You cannot make that correlation [between the number of fresh COVID-19 cases to the easing of health restrictions],” Duque said in a press briefing when asked whether or not increasing fresh cases are the result of less restrictive quarantine protocols in the country.

Fresh COVID-19 cases, or test results that came out and validated within three days, have been averaging on 200 to 300 in recent days, according to data released by the Department of Health (DOH) shown below:

• June 8 – 331
• June 7 – 378
• June 6 – 350
• June 5 – 168
• June 4 – 313
• June 3 – 221
• June 2 – 176
• June 1 – 119
• May 31 – 16
• May 30 – 252
• May 29 – 46
• May 28 – 109

Starting May 15, quarantine protocols in many parts of the country shifted to general community quarantine (GCQ) after about two months of hard lockdown due to the high occurrence of COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, Metro Manila and other “high-risk” areas remained under stricter quarantine measures, known as modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) for two more weeks.

It was only on June 1 that high-risk areas were downgraded to GCQ.

The DOH is set to release a new set of data analytics on Wednesday to show the impact of loosened quarantine protocols in the metro and in other areas, Duque said.

This will also be the basis of whether quarantine measures in the metro should be further eased or be reinstated.

“Hintayin na lang natin ‘yung magiging result ng report ng data analytics expert group,” the Health chief said.

(We will wait for the result of the report of the data analytics group.)

To date, the Philippines has a total of 22,474 COVID-19 cases, with 1,011 deaths and 4,637 recoveries.