The Philippines has crossed the threshold of 150,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases Friday.
The Department of Health (DoH) announced 6,216 new infections, pushing the country’s caseload to 153,660, with 79,813 patients are currently undergoing treatment.
The National Capital Region still has the most number of new cases at 3,848, followed by Laguna with 302, Rizal with 242, Cavite with 240, and Bulacan with 178.
The death toll went up to 2,442 after 16 new deaths were recorded -- eight died this month, four in July, three in April, and one in May.
The number of recoveries also increased to 71,405 as the Health department announced 1,038 new recoveries.
In a related development, the DoH said that it would again announce another “time-based” COVID-19 recoveries on Sunday.
The DoH announced 38,075 recoveries in a single day last July 30 as they “implemented a "mass recovery" adjustment wherein all mild and asymptomatic cases have been re-tagged as recovered with endorsement from the regional offices.”
“This coming Sunday, we are going to have another round of tagging of recoveries. We call this "time-based" tagging of recoveries and it is part of our policy,” said DoH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire in a press briefing.
“Every Sunday gagawin na natin iyan para hindi tayo nagba-bulk lagi ng announcements (Every Sunday we will do that so that we will not have bulk announcements),” she added.
Severe and critical cases are not included in this protocol because they have a longer recovery period.
Vergeire explained again that they are not anymore requiring a patient to have a negative test result using the RT-PCR test method, for them to be tagged as recovered, because the RT-PCR is too sensitive in detecting the COVID-19 virus.
“So we have the clinical criteria plus the completion of 14 days isolation from the onset of illness or from the time of the patient’s swabbing. Pag tiningnan namin 'yung outcomes, wala silang outcome we will tag them as recovered already (When we look at their status and they have no outcome, we will tag them as recovered already),” said Vergeire.
The Health official assured that “safeguards” are in place to ensure the accuracy of the data.
“But the safeguard would be, bago namin gawin 'yan, ang aming regional offices through their specific LGUs nililinis nila 'yan or tinitignan nila kung 'yung pasyente ba ay talagang active sya or hindi sya patay, hindi sya naka-admit at hindi na active yung kaso. So may ganun tayo na validation before we can do that (But the safeguard would be, before we tag,our regional offices through their specific LGUs they check if the patient is not an active case, not dead, or is not admitted (in a hospital). So we have that validation before we can do that),” said Vergeire.
She said that such method in tagging recoveries is also being followed in other countries.
“Tiningnan natin 'yung mga policies ng recoveries sa iba't-ibang bansa kung saan ang US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), European CDC, and India they also implement this kind of time-based tagging of recoveries,” she said.