MANILA, Philippines — If the Philippines cannot stop the fast rise in coronavirus infections, the country will surpass the peak it reached in the third quarter of 2020, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III warned on Monday as he urged local governments to intensify preventive efforts to halt the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
Duque also said the rise in cases was due to increased movement and the reopening of the economy, but presidential spokesperson Harry Roque attributed it to noncompliance with public health measures.
In the past few days, the Philippines has been recording around 5,000 daily cases.
On Aug. 10 last year, the country logged a record high of 6,958 cases.
‘Timeout’
It was also around this time when Metro Manila and suburbs was placed on modified enhanced community quarantine in response to a call for a “timeout” from exhausted health workers.
In a meeting with President Duterte on Monday, Duque said the number of cases in recent days was close to matching the surge from July to September last year.
“We need to stop the number of cases. If not, we may surpass and get a higher number than the July-August peak of COVID cases,” Duque said.
He attributed the spike in cases to increased movement that came with the relaxation of quarantine restrictions and to the reopening of the economy.
“Because of this, mobility increased, the transmission rate increased, and the contact rate increased,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 4,437 additional coronavirus infections, bringing the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country to 631,320 overall.
The DOH said 11 more patients had died, raising the death toll to 12,848. It said 116 other patients had recovered, pushing the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 560,736.
That left the country with 57,736 active cases, of which 92.6 percent were mild, 4.0 percent asymptomatic, 0.68 percent moderate, 1.3 percent severe, and 1. 3 percent critical.
Duque said an increase in cases was seen in Metro Manila and the Cordillera Autonomous Region, where the presence of the UK variant of the coronavirus had been detected.
But he said he did not know if this was a factor that influenced the rise in cases or just a coincidental finding.
Violations of health rules
Roque gave a different explanation for the spike, which he said was due to people no longer complying with minimum public health standards.
He noted that infections were not increasing when the government reopened the economy in October and after the Christmas holidays.
It was only in March that a flare-up began, he said.
“We have empirical evidence that more people are going out and moving because we reopened the economy. But I don’t think it’s the reopening of the economy per se. I think it has to do more with less compliance with health protocols,” Roque said in a press briefing.
He said he had seen data showing the police had apprehended more people for violating public health rules than people breaching other regulations.
“For me, we can reopen the economy as long as we comply with minimum health standards,” Roque said.
Carlito Galvez Jr., head of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, agreed with Roque, saying people relaxed their compliance with health measures when they learned that COVID-19 vaccines were arriving in the country, which prompted his group to remind the public that while vaccines offered additional protection, people must continue obeying health measures.
Galvez also said coronavirus variants were a factor in the increase in cases, the reason why the task force recommended limiting the number of inbound passengers to 1,500 a day.
Duque said local governments must step up efforts to prevent the transmission of the virus and make sure to detect infections early through active case finding.
They should deploy barangay health teams to look for residents with COVID-19 symptoms and isolate them to prevent transmission, he said.
They should also test these people and conduct aggressive contact tracing to cut the transmission of the disease, he said.
Don’t blame the people
A group of doctors, however, said the government should stop blaming the people for the rise in infections and instead find ways to make it easier for people to comply with health measures.
The Healthcare Professionals Alliance Against COVID-19 (HPAAC) also said there was no need yet to ban inbound travel despite the local detection of coronavirus variants, but travelers must be quarantined regardless of their test findings on arrival in the Philippines.
Speaking for the alliance in an online news conference on Tuesday, Dr. Antonio Dans, an epidemiologist, said President Duterte’s order to give away free masks to the poor would help, but “[we] need more than just that.”
HPAAC appealed to business and industry leaders to introduce work-from-home arrangements or staggered work hours to decongest offices and factories.
It said companies must also improve ventilation in work premises.
Dr. Aileen Espina, a member of the alliance, said local governments should impose targeted lockdowns at the earliest signs of transmission to prevent the virus from spreading far.
She also recommended the adoption of bike lanes to decongest buses and trains and the introduction of open-air diners, opening of parks and leisure areas.
Espina said local governments should have coordinated contact tracing systems for intercity movement, such as those employed in Pasig, Valenzuela, Mandaluyong and Antipolo.
The next few days—or weeks—are “critical” in preserving the health-care system, with the intensive care units of COVID-19 referral hospitals in Metro Manila already 80 percent full, the alliance said.
The doctors said they would not hesitate to call for another timeout if the spike in cases threatened to overwhelm the health-care system.
Philippine General Hospital reported a full intensive care unit on Monday. On Tuesday, two other major hospitals in Metro Manila reported rising admissions.
East Avenue Medical Center in Quezon City said 77 percent of its 250 COVID-19 beds were occupied. Lung Center of the Philippines, also in Quezon City, said 85 of its 105 COVID-19 beds were in use.
In Manila, the health department said 109 of the 300 COVID-19 beds in hospitals in the city were occupied.
Presidential spokesperson Roque acknowledged that health-care use in eight regions had increased since Feb. 11, with Metro Manila recording the highest increase.
But none of the regions reached moderate risk and high or critical occupancy, he said.
“Even if there are a lot of reports that some hospitals are reaching capacity, we have a one hospital command center that can be called to determine which hospital you can go to so that you would no longer go to the hospital that has reached capacity,” Roque said.
“[O]verall, we are not at moderate risk when it comes to health-care [use] rate,” he said.