With nearly 7,000 coronavirus disease cases in one day, Senator Risa Hontiveros said on Tuesday the government should seriously take this highest single-day increase as a wake up call and revise its strategy against the COVID-19.
“The government should be reminded that we are dealing with people’s lives and not mere statistics,” Hontiveros said.
“Mula pa noong pinaka-unang kaso ng COVID-19 sa bansa, utang na ng pamahalaan sa mga Pilipino ang isang makatao at medikal sa pagtugon sa problemang ito (From its response on the very first case of COVID-19 in the country, the government owes every Filipino a humane and scientific approach in dealing with this problem). No more excuses. Failure to deliver is deadly,” she said.
“Sana wala na tayong maririnig na excuse o alternative interpretation ng datos mula sa gobyerno (I hope we will no longer hear any excuse or alternative interpretation of data from the government),” she added.
The Department of Health (DOH) on Monday announced 6,958 new infections in the Philippines, bringing the COVID-19 cases to a total of 136, 638. The said data were based on documents submitted by 74 out of the 99 operational laboratories.
The Philippines has overtaken Indonesia in terms of the number of COVID-19 positive cases in Southeast Asia.
Hontiveros said it is imperative that the government intensifies its “test, trace, treat (3Ts)” and isolate mechanism more aggressively and make COVID-19 testing readily available and accessible to at-risk communities and “hotspot” areas.
“We need to hire more contact tracers and put an effective system to it. We need to increase the capacity of our hospitals, protect our frontliners, and improve community-based care,” she said.
Hontiveros said the Philippines has the longest lockdown in the world while still having the most number of active cases in Southeast Asia.
“Experts have been pointing out that the increase in our cases is not because we have been testing more but because there is no slowing down of transmission,” she said.
“Unless we take the data as they are and formulate a health-centered response towards the pandemic, cases will continue to soar, more Filipinos will get sick, and our health infrastructure could collapse,” the lawmaker said.