The country has "successfully" flattened the curve for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections, said Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III.
“First of all, we have successfully flattened the curve since April and the metric for saying, arriving at that conclusion of flattening the curve is actually one, is the case doubling time of the COVID-19 infection has actually become longer,” said Duque during pre-State of the Nation Address (SONA) forum on Wednesday.
Duque said that the country’s case doubling time ---or the time it takes for new cases to increase two-fold--- is now between eight to 12 days as compared to the 2.5 days “during the initial phase of the pandemic.”
“Overtime we have managed to stabilize the number of new cases being reported,” said Duque.
“The other metric to say that we have flattened the curve is also the mortality doubling time --- has also got longer and is now in the moderate risk classification,” said Duque.
The Health chief said that this has “provide us a window of opportunity to improve and increase, ramp up our health system capacity.”
As of this writing the country has 57,545 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 20,459 recoveries and 1,603 deaths.
Last May, Duque drew criticisms after he said that the Philippines is already in the second wave of the outbreak. His statement, however, was then retracted by the DOH, saying that the country is still in the “first wave driven by local community transmission."