100 days in quarantine: Palace rules out easing of restrictions

DEEP PROBE A woman gets a swab test for the new coronavirus at Santa Ana Hospital in Manila on Tuesday. The Philippines can now do 12,000 to 13,000 tests a day, which could be the explanation for the spikes in coronavirus cases in recent days. —RICHARD A. REYES

MANILA, Philippines — After 100 days in quarantine, Filipinos still cannot expect a return to normality as the temporary government body handling the Duterte administration’s coronavirus response has decided to keep restrictions in place, even in areas considered low risk for infections.

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases modified the quarantine levels in different areas and those considered low risk would be placed under modified general community quarantine, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque told a press briefing on Tuesday.

President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Filipinos to stay home in mid-March, or 100 days ago, to halt the spread of the new coronavirus.

Areas classified as moderate risk would be placed under general community quarantine, while high-risk areas would be placed under enhanced community quarantine, Roque said.

“This means there is no new normal for now,” Roque said.

Announcement next week

The government will announce the new quarantine levels next week.

The restrictions would be decided based on factors such as case doubling time and critical care use in the provinces and cities.

Roque said the quarantine levels would be modified based on social, economic and security factors, clustering of cases, health system capacity, and continuous trend — increasing or decreasing — of new cases.

He challenged the public to disprove the prediction of University of the Philippines researchers that coronavirus cases in the country could reach 40,000 this month.

“Let us not allow the number of cases to reach 40,000 after the month of June. That is a challenge. I hope everyone will accept this challenge,” he said.

Roque urged people to continue observing public health measures and to stay at home as much as possible.

On Tuesday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported the highest single-day increase in the number of new coronavirus cases that took the national tally past 32,000.

Unexplained spike

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said 1,150 new cases were reported across the country, pushing the national caseload to 31,825.

It was the second time that the DOH logged more than a thousand cases in a day, the first being May 26 when it reported 1,046 cases — a spike that it attributed to the shift to an automated system that expedited the validation of confirmed cases.

On Tuesday, Vergeire did not explain the surge in cases, although earlier in the day she noted that the increase was a “function of reporting.”

“When you plot it based on the onset of illness or the actual date of death, the increase is not that high. It’s really based on the reporting that we have right now,” she said.

The number of actual tests done daily has increased to 12,000 and to 13,000. It was unclear, however, whether the total tests done on Tuesday surpassed the more than 16,000 conducted on June 17.

Improved testing capacity

Earlier, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said a sudden surge in cases might be a function of improved testing.

But Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO emergencies program, stressed that if hospitalizations and deaths increased at the same time as cases did, that situation was no longer driven by improved testing capacity.

“It’s important to look at increased numbers, to examine where those increased numbers are happening, who are those increased numbers happening to, can it be explained by increased testing, is the health system starting to come under pressure?” Ryan said.

“If you don’t know where the virus is, the chances are that the virus will surprise you,” he added.

The DOH, however, said its epidemiology bureau was “analyzing all the available data and information” to explain the surge in cases.

Of the additional cases reported on Tuesday, 789 were patients who had tested positive for the new coronavirus in the last three days. Central Visayas recorded most of those cases, 288, followed by Metro Manila, 207.

Highest number of ‘fresh’ casesThis was the highest number of “fresh” cases reported since the DOH introduced the classification in late May.

The remainder of the additional cases, 361, were “late” ones, or patients who tested positive four days ago or even earlier. Metro Manila topped the list, with 110, followed by Central Visayas, 32.

The DOH also reported that 299 more patients had recovered, bringing the total number of coronavirus survivors to 8,442. The death toll, however, increased to 1,186, with the deaths of nine more patients.

Seven of the nine died between June 1 and 17.

On the eve of the 100th-day anniversary of the lockdown, the DOH acknowledged that much still needed to be done to improve the government’s coronavirus response.

Improvements

Vergeire on Monday pointed to “a lot of weaknesses” in the system that the DOH hoped to deal with soon so it could deliver “a more appropriate response.”

She, however, claimed there had been improvements, such as in the doubling time of cases and critical care use rate.

From two to three days in March, it now takes 7.26 days for cases nationwide to double, she said. The critical care use rate is now 35 percent, which means that generally the health-care system is not overwhelmed, she said.

Three months ago, hospitals, particularly in Metro Manila, released statements one after another asking patients to go elsewhere as they had reached capacity.

“With these indications, it means that we have been able to prolong and give time [for the health system to cope]. We are already in a state where there are indications that we may be flattening the curve. But we would like to be cautious in saying that, because we are seeing spikes of cases in some of the areas in the country,” Vergeire said, referring to Cebu City, which was placed back on strict lockdown last week after recording a case doubling time of 6.63 days.