Palace factors ramped-up testing in overtaking Indonesia in COVID-19 tally

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Friday gave much credit to the government’s ramped up testing capacity, which it said was a factor for the Philippines overtaking Indonesia in terms of number of coronavirus cases.

This, after the Philippines became the country with the highest COVID-19 infections in Southeast Asia countries with 119, 460 cases surpassing Indonesia’s 118,753.

“Ibig sabihin po dahil mas maigting ang ating pagte-test, hindi po totoo na mas marami tayong kaso sa Indonesia. Hindi lang nalalaman ng mga Indonesian kung sino sino yung mga umiikot na meron na pong sakit. At least tayo po, alam natin kung sino na po sila,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in an online briefing.

(It means that since we have conducted more tests, it’s not true that we have more cases than Indonesia. Indonesians just do not know who is walking around while carrying the virus. At least we know who they are.)

Roque underscored that the Philippines has tested more of its population 1.6 million tests conducted over Indonesia’s 908,000.

“Kung titignan natin ang populasyon ng dalawang bansa, ang test na ating isinagawa na po relative to our population size is 1.5 percent. Ikumpara niyo naman po sa 0.34 percent ng Indonesia,” Roque said.

(If we look at the population of the two countries, the tests we have conducted relative to our population size is 1.5 percent compared to Indonesia’s 0.34 percent.)

Indonesia has an estimated 267 million population, more than double of the Philippines’ estimated 106 million population.

When sought for clarification on what was his basis when he said that the Philippines had lesser COVID-19 cases, Roque admitted he was not sure how to answer and further stressed that the country tested more people than Indonesia.

“Hindi ko po alam how to answer that. Basta ang malinaw lang po sa akin, Indonesia po, with almost more or less the same cases as us has one-third of the actual testing that we have conducted on our people,” Roque said.

(I don’t know how to answer that. But what’s clear to me is that Indonesia, which has more or less the same cases as us, only has one-third of the actual testing that we have conducted on our people.)

“So ‘yun po ang aking basis for saying na hindi naman talaga totoo at conclusive na mas marami tayong kaso dito sa Pilipinas kaysa sa Indonesia. Mas marami lang tayong kaso na nalalaman na dito sa Pilipinas dahil nga po three times ang ating testing more compared to the testing done by Indonesia,” he went on.

(That’s my basis for saying that it’s not conclusive to say that the Philippines has more cases over Indonesia. We just record more cases in the Philippines because our testing is three times more compared to Indonesia.)

Metro Manila along with provinces of Laguna, Cavite, Rizal and Bulacan were earlier reverted to stricter quarantine measures until August 18 to give medical frontliners a “timeout” and to provide the government time to step up its COVID-19 efforts.