Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa (File photo by LYN RILLON / Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said he would ask President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to lift the state of public health emergency on COVID-19 as new cases fell further to less than 500 daily.
Herbosa, one of the government advisers during the pandemic before he was appointed health chief, said the country should follow suit with the World Health Organization which no longer considers COVID-19 a global health emergency.
“So I would ask [Malacañang for] the lifting of the public health emergency… There is no more public health emergency. [COVID-19] is [now] just one of the diseases that we monitor, like influenza, cough, colds, etcetera,” Herbosa told a press conference at the Department of Health (DOH) headquarters in Manila on Monday.
Detected COVID-19 cases continued their decline, falling by 20 percent to a seven-day average of 492 daily cases from the previous average of 612 daily cases, according to the DOH.
Out of the 3,442 individuals who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus last week, 37 were severely or critically sick.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte declared a state of public health emergency through Proclamation No. 922 on March 8, 2020, after COVID-19 infections were confirmed in the country.
State of calamity
Duterte also declared a nationwide state of calamity on March 16, 2020, which ended on Dec. 31 last year.
No new COVID-19 deaths were reported last week.
The official death toll stood at 66,482 out of the 4,162,752 confirmed cases since the first case — a 38-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, China — was reported on Jan. 20, 2020.
Based on the DOH bulletin, the utilization of reserved COVID-19 beds also followed a downward trend.
COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and non-ICU beds were 13 percent and 17.7 percent occupied, respectively, compared to 16.6 percent and 19.5 percent, respectively, a week ago.
There were 325 COVID-19 patients in serious or critical condition out of the 2,478 admitted patients.
As of June 25, 8,244 individuals were known to be still infected with the virus.