Presidential spokesman Harry Roque on Monday, April 26, said that breaching the one-million mark for COVID-19 cases is not a “negative reflection” of the government’s pandemic response, maintaining instead that it has done well managing the new variants of the virus.
The Palace official insisted that the public should focus instead on the number of recovered cases, low death rate, and better global ranking.
“What I’m saying is that we need to look at how many recovered out of the 997,000 and how many died. It’s 1.7 percent. So, I don’t think it is a negative reflection. We have a world ranking, we can see that we are managing still the new variants rather well,” Roque said in a mix of English and Filipino during his virtual press briefing.
The Philippines is expected to breach the one-million mark on Monday as the Department of Health (DOH) reported that the total number of COVID-19 cases on Sunday was at 997,523.
As the country averages more than 3,000 cases a day for the past month, this means that it will reach the one-millionth mark today.
The spokesperson argued that out of the 997,523 cases, 903,665 individuals have already recovered, reflecting a 90.6 recovery rate.
“Sa mga aktibong cases po natin mahigit kumulang 100,000 at kung ikukumpara mo ito sa buong daigdig eh number ano na nga tayo... bumaba pa po ang ranking natin. Ibig sabihin mas humusay pa ‘yung ating ranking sa buong mundo (In the active cases, there’s more or less 100,000 and if you are going to compare this to the rest of the world, we have a lower ranking. It means we got better in the global ranking),” he said.
The Philippines has 77,075 active cases as of April 25, Wednesday. The number of deaths is at 16,783 or 1.68 percent while the world average for fatality rate is currently at 2.1 percent.
Roque said that the Philippines has dropped to 26th, down from 20th, in the global ranking of COVID-19 cases.
He also defended the surge in COVID-19 cases, pointing to the presence of the new variants of the virus in the country as the reason.
Roque said that there was also a rise in COVID-19 cases around the world because of these new variants.
The Palace official highlighted the government’s new strategy—PDITR (prevention, detection, isolation, treatment, and reintegration)—and the faster distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines to fight against the virus.