Former Senator Heherson Alvarez lost his battle against COVID-19 on Monday–even as Health department data showed that the number of recoveries from the disease continued to surpass the number of casualties for the sixth time the same day.
The department said 41 COVID-19 patients recovered from COVID-19 compared with the 19 people it killed as of Monday afternoon.
The number of recoveries totaled 613 compared with 428 fatalities, but the 200 new confirmed cases brought the total to 6,459.
Hexilon Guidote Alvarez confirmed the death of his 80-year-old father who served as secretary of the Environment and Agrarian Reform departments.
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The senator, a staunch critic of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, also represented Isabela province as a congressman.
“We are all still in a state of grief and shock,” the younger Alvarez said.
In the line of duty
Doctor Wilbur Jan Robert Demafiles died in the line of duty on April 19 attending to COVID-19 patients, according to his brother Robert Sean.
He said Dr. Wilbur died of a heart attack after working nonstop for threedays. He was 30 years old.“He martyred himself for those afflicted with COVID-19 at the hospital,” Robert Sean wrote in a message shared by a Twitter user on Sunday.
Dr. Wilbur served on the frontlines of Manila Doctors Hospital and was also a volunteer doctor at LoveYourself Inc., where staff expressed their gratitude to him.
"We remember him for his enthusiasm and commitment to use his role as a medical practitioner to help in our advocacy campaigns," LoveYourself Inc. wrote in a social media post.
Guidelines revised
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases has revised its guidelines on the expanded testing for the coronavirus disease.
The agency made the announcement as the Philippines moved closer to the end of the Luzon-wide Enhanced Community Quarantine on April 30.
READ: Frontline docs playing ’God’ to save lives
Cabinet Secretary and IATF spokesman Karlo Nograles says the expanded testing will only be conducted on people who are “at-risk of contracting the COVID-19 infection.”
He says those required to undergo testing are “suspect cases, individuals with relevant history of travel and exposure or contact—whether symptomatic or asymptomatic—and health workers with possible exposure, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic.”
Indiscriminate testing beyond close contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case is not recommended, Nograles says.