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Duque: gov't aims downward trajectory rather than flattening curve
Duque: gov't aims downward trajectory rather than flattening curve
The government prefers a downward trajectory than seeing a flattening of the curve in the number of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the country, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Monday, Oct. 5.
“We like a downward trajectory than flattening the curve. The really the goal is to really have a downward trajectory,” he said during an interview on CNN Philippines amid observations made by statistical experts that there has been a flattening of the curve.
Admitting that the virus will not totally go away, Duque said the aim of the government is not to have a zero COVID-19 cases but “to crush the cluster, reduce the transmission, reduce deaths and at the same time reduce the health systems capacity.”
With this, the secretary said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) is also aiming to bring up the recovery rates of COVID-19 cases.
“Our goal is to bring it up to about 90 to 95 percent recovery rate. And that is what the IATF is really focusing on. Hopefully we could do a 98 percent recovery rate,” he said.
At the moment, Duque noted that the country has a recovery rate of 85 percent.
“We have 273,079 recovered patients over 322,497,” he cited.
On the other hand, the disagrees with the claims of Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo that the administration continues to be denial over the countries COVID-19 status considering it has placed 20th among the countries with the most number of cases.
“We’re not doing fantastic but we’re doing okay,” he said.
Compared to richer and advanced countries, Duque said the Philippines has kept the death rate low at 1.9 percent which is the third lowest among the 20 countries in the list.
“We are number 95 in deaths per million population. That’s about 52 deaths per million or 5.2 per 100,000 per population which is more than 10 times lower than many more advanced and much richer countries with much more sophisticated health system,” he cited.
Also, the secretary said the Philippines ranks 107th among countries in terms of the number cases per million in population.
Duque also pointed out that the Philippines has limited resources compared to its Southeast Asian neighbors and, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), spent around $21.5 billion in COVID-19 response.
He noted that according to ADB Indonesia spent $115.2 billion, Singapore $998 billion, Thailand $84 billion, and Malaysia $71 billion.