MANILA, Philippines — Health Secretary Francisco Duque III was referring to the longer case doubling time for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) or the period it takes for the number of confirmed cases to become two-fold, and the readiness of the Philippines’ health system when he said the country has flattened the curve since April.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said this on Wednesday after Duque drew flak on social media for his statement on Tuesday on flattening the COVID-19 curve. Duque later retracted the statement.
Vergeire explained that flattening the curve should be interpreted with two indicators, such as the case doubling time and the readiness of the health system in responding to the pandemic.
“When we say we flattened the curve, we would like to lengthen the time that the cases will double or the cases will increase that much and it will peak so that we can have adequate time to prepare for our health system,” she said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.
“So when we say that we have flattened the curve, we were able to prepare our health system just in case there would be a surge or an increase in the number of cases in the country. When the secretary said this, he was really meaning that we were able to prepare our health system,” she also said.
Vergeire attributed the country’s readiness in handling the pandemic to the increased testing capacity, establishment of several quarantine facilities, upgrading of hospitals, and other efforts in the government’s COVID-19 response.
“It’s really quite difficult to interpret and explain the flattening of the curve because you can’t just pertain to the number of cases if it’s rising or not. It has to be interpreted in such a way that you are taking two things together like the doubling of the numbers and the preparation of the health system for possible surges in numbers,” the health official explained further.
The supposedly flattened curve was mentioned by Duque during a pre-State of the Nation Address forum, where he cited the longer case doubling time and the decreased mortality rate due to the illness.
He said that the case doubling time in the country is now between eight to 12 days, much higher compared to the 2.5 days case doubling time during the initial phase of the outbreak.
However, he later retracted and instead said that the curve was “bent.”
The country has so far logged a total of 58,850 confirmed cases of the disease, with an additional 1,392 fresh and late cases reported on Wednesday. Of this number, 20,976 have recovered while 1,614 have died.