Palace: ‘Unfortunate’ that others ignore rest of COVID-19 data

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang lamented on Sunday how some seem to “blatantly ignore” the rest of the country’s data on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) when citing the total number of confirmed cases of the illness.

“We find it unfortunate that some quarters cannot seem to see the forest for the trees when they cite the cumulative number of cases and blatantly ignore the rest of the COVID-19 data,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.

Roque said that while the number of COVID-19 cases in the country is still increasing, the rise in the figure is “foremost attributed to aggressive testing that we now have.”

He noted that there is also a “tremendous increase” in the number of recoveries and a “sharp decline” in the number of deaths.

“Nonetheless, we sympathize with the families who lost their members and loved ones due to COVID-19. We believe that one life lost is one too many and that these numbers will not lull us to a false sense of security but instead make us work double time in improving our response against COVID-19,” said the Palace official.

He  further said that “the sad reality is that the virus is not going away easily until we develop a vaccine or find a cure.”

“It is for this reason that the government is serious in looking at science in making decisions, such as the country’s case doubling rate, or the number of days it takes for cases to double, the utilization of critical care facilities and the case fatality rate which now stands at 2.7% which is far lower than the global average of 5.5%, as of July 19, 2020,” said Roque.

The Department of Health reported an additional 2,241 COVID-19 fresh and late cases on Sunday, bringing the nationwide count to 67,456.

Meanwhile, the total number of recoveries is now at 22,465, while the death toll is at 1,831.

“As I have said in my previous briefings, the University of the Philippines earlier predicted that we would have more than THREE MILLION COVID-19 cases if the current government did not act decisively,” Roque added.

“The community quarantine that the Administration imposed has helped us improve our health system capacity, and in turn, save thousands of lives at a huge cost to our economy. We earlier took the bitter pill of choosing health above economic activities,” he also said.

/MUF