DOH counters OCTA: ‘Thorough evaluation’ needed to declare an endemic

FILE PHOTO Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explains a point during the DOH press briefing. Screengrab from livestream

MANILA, Philippines — It takes a long time of thorough evaluation before  an endemic is declared, the Department of Health (DOH) said Friday after OCTA Research said that Cebu City could be close to the endemic stage of COVID-19.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said declaring an endemic is being coordinated with the World Health Organization (WHO), and that it even took three to five years of observation to declare an endemic of other diseases in the country.

“Kailangan ng thorough evaluation with our experts. It takes time. It takes about three to five years kasi kailangan natin imonitor kung mag-i-stabilize at magkakaroon ng low transmission sa isang area bago tayo makapagsabi na it is endemic already. We do not just use this term. Kailangan may basehan tayo,” she told an online media forum.

(We need a thorough evaluation by experts. It takes time. It takes about three to five years because we need to monitor if it will stabilize and if there will be low transmission in an area before we can say a disease is endemic. We do not just use this term. We need a basis.)

In a media forum on Thursday, OCTA Research Guido David said that Cebu City is “probably close to what we call the endemic stage” of COVID-19 after it recorded just an average of 15 new daily cases for seven days.

However, Vergeire said that a decreasing number of cases does not mean that the disease is just endemic and that there are criteria for declaring such. At present, the WHO classifies the global coronavirus crisis like a pandemic.

“Endemic is a technical term, it is an epidemiologic term, and I advise people who are talking to media to be very careful when they speak of these things kasi ‘yan po, kapag narinig ng ating mga kababayan ay baka po maging bunsod na maging complacent sila because the disease is already endemic when in fact hindi pa po natin masasabi,” she said.

She added that COVID-19 still has “a lot of uncertainties and unknowns.”

“Hanggang ngayon, ang ebidensya natin ay hindi pa kumpleto. We still have a lot of variants which we are monitoring across the globe so hindi pa po tayo out of the woods to say that there are areas in the country that are at that endemic stage,” she said.

(Up to now, evidence is still not complete. We still have a lot of variants that we are monitoring across the globe so we cannot say we are out of the woods to say that there are areas in the country that are at that endemic stage.)

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