Robredo starts posting COVID-19 data to check if PH is flattening the curve

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Leni Robredo has decided to share the daily COVID-19 bulletin from the Department of Health (DOH) in an effort to monitor whether the country is actually flattening the infection curve.

Robredo said on Tuesday that her office would also post an epidemiology curve provided by the University of the Philippines (UP) COVID-19 Response Team — sourced too from DOH data.

“Starting today, we will be posting daily COVID-19 updates based on the data being released by the DOH on a daily basis. We are including an epidemic curve (also based on DOH data) which we are sourcing from the UP COVID Response Team,” the Vice President said in her personal Facebook account.

“An epi curve is always useful for many reasons, one of which is to assess if we are already flattening the curve,” she added.

According to Robredo, the flattening of the curve would only happen if people would contribute by following health protocols and helping each other.

“We all have a responsibility to perform for us to be able to achieve this. This includes not just following health and safety protocols but also doing our share in helping those in need. So let’s all bolt in!” she noted.

https://www.facebook.com/leni.robredo/posts/10219764538236265

Flattening the curve, or lowering the number of infections and deaths per day due to COVID-19, is considered as one of the signs that a country is winning the fight against the pandemic.

As of now, the country’s trend of cases per day is still pointing upwards, with the highest tip only being recorded recently, when DOH reported the highest single-day fresh cases and total cases last July 8.

Currently, the country has 57,545 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of whom 1,603 have died and 20,459 have recovered.

Despite the increasing number of recoveries, the Philippines has the highest number of active cases in the Southeast Asian region.

On Monday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire admitted that the country’s R-naught number (R0), or the number of persons a COVID-19 patient might infect,  slightly increased from 1.09 to 1.23.

Recently, Malacañang was surrounded by controversy after presidential spokesperson Harry Roque celebrated as the country beat the UP prediction of 40,000 COVID-19 cases by the end of June, as the country only had less than 38,000 by that time.

But the latest prediction from a group of experts at UP’s OCTA Research appears to be more possible than the last time around, as they believe the country can register 60,000 cases by the end of July — given the high R-naught rate, which is still not below the ideal less-than-one level.

Aside from the COVID-19 tally, Robredo’s office is also working with private partners in assisting health workers and frontliners working despite the health hazards.

Recently, Robredo brought her projects to Cebu City in response to a spike in the number of cases there.

—With a report from Jim Mendoza (trainee)

/atm