The COVID-19 death toll in the Philippines breached the 5,000-mark on Tuesday as health officials reported 50 new fatalities.
The Department of Health (DOH) recorded 1,635 additional COVID-19 cases, the lowest in about two weeks, but the number of deaths since the pandemic started rose to 5,049.
The last time that new cases were lower than 2,000 was on Sept. 7.
The DOH reported 450 new recoveries, bringing to 230,643 the number of patients that have recovered from the disease.
There are 56,097 active cases of COVID-19. Of this number, 86.4 percent are mild, 9.2 percent asymptomatic, 1.3 percent are severe, and 3.1 percent are critical.
Pesticide won’t work, Robredo says
Vice President Leni Robredo chided President Rodrigo Duterte in a Facebook post, saying the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be solved by spraying pesticide over the country as the Chief Executive said.
She said after watching the regular Monday press briefings, she could not help but conclude that it was not enough to say that there are enough hospital beds and funeral parlors, and that we all need to wait for a vaccine to arrive.
She said there are other ways to address COVID-19, apart from wearing a face mask and waiting for a vaccine: suppressing the pandemic by means of medical and non-medical interventions; overcoming humanitarian emergencies like poverty, hunger, unemployment, and mental distress caused by the pandemic; restructuring public and private finances in the wake of the pandemic, and rebuilding the economy in an inclusive, resilient and sustainable way. Willie Casas and Rio N. Araja
PCP warns against complacency
An official of the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP) on Tuesday warned the public not to be complacent as doctors have observed an increase in severe cases of COVID-19.
PCP Vice President Ma. Encarnita Limpin, during an online forum, said health care workers are not letting their guard down despite what she said was a decrease in the number of new COVID-19 cases.
“We should not relax, and what we are seeing right now is an increase in severe and critical cases," Limpin said.
She said health care workers have seen more COVID-19 patients needing to be confined in the intensive care unit of hospitals. – Willie Casas EO eyed to keep costs of testing down
President Rodrigo Duterte might sign an executive order (EO) that will impose a price cap for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) swab tests for COVID-19, Malacañang said Tuesday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque made this statement after the Department of Health (DOH) submitted to the Office of the President a recommendation for the issuance of an EO that imposes a ceiling on the prices of RT-PCR tests.
Most labs can submit timely reports
Most laboratories running COVID-19 tests are now able to submit their reports on time and no longer causing problems with the country’s daily tally of cases, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday.
“We saw in the past days that we have been able to cope in terms of our laboratory submissions. And we are able to receive most of these backlogs from the laboratories already,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said during a virtual briefing.
Vergeire said the COVID-19 cases being reported daily are no longer due to laboratories trying to catch up with their delayed test results.