DOH guidelines good, local compliance poor, WHO says

MANILA, Philippines — While the Department of Health (DOH) has laid down good guidelines in fighting the new coronavirus, the local governments’ poor compliance with these has led to a rise in cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Compliance with the DOH guidelines does not seem to be “universally good,” said WHO Philippine representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe.

Abeyasinghe noted an increase in coronavirus infections in the country, saying this could be due to increased testing, which was not a bad thing because it meant it had been detecting the transmission of the virus.

Worrying situation

But there are areas with increasing transmission where the test positivity rate is much higher than the national average, “and this is worrying,” he said.

“The DOH has come up with very good guidelines on how to manage positive cases, how to quarantine them, but the implementation at local government levels in different areas of the country is different. So where we see poor compliance with the guidelines, we’re seeing that the number of cases is increasing and this is actually becoming a worrying situation,” Abeyasinghe told a news briefing.

He cited areas in Metro Manila and Cebu City and emerging hot spots for the coronavirus in Leyte and Samar provinces.

Abeyasinghe also said the Philippines needed to strengthen its contact tracing and quarantine systems to prevent further transmission of the virus. “There is improvement in the last month, but it’s not keeping pace with the expansion of the testing capacity,” he said.

But he also described the Philippines as doing “relatively well” in comparison with other countries and said he was glad the country went into early lockdown, which helped prevent hundreds of thousands of coronavirus cases and thousands of deaths.

UP projection wrong

Disputing reports in local media, Abeyasinghe said the WHO did not come to the conclusion that the Philippines had the fastest rise in coronavirus cases in the Western Pacific. The WHO does not compare countries, he said.

“The World Health Organization never made such a comment or an assessment,” he added.

Malacañang congratulated the public for disproving a University of the Philippines (UP) projection that local coronavirus cases would hit 40,000 by the end of June.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said there were 37,438 cases as of Monday and denied that the case backlog was 10,000.

“We only have 1,000-plus backlogs, which means we did not hit 40,000, or we will not hit 40,000 by the end of June,” Roque said at a news briefing.

UP researchers said local coronavirus cases might surpass 60,000 in July, with cases in Metro Manila rising by 27,000 and in Cebu province by 15,000.

—With a report from Julie M. Aurelio