Government officials urged the public to help in sustaining downward trend in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the country by strictly complying with minimum public health standards.

“There has been a downward trend in the number of cases,” said Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III in a media briefing after a symbolic vaccination at Makati Medical Center on Thursday, May 13.

“If you look at the trend, it’s quite clear, it’s going down” Duque said, noting that for the past four weeks, the numbers of COVID-19 cases - based on a 7-day moving average - have been going down.

For the downward trend to be sustained, Duque urged everyone “to work together.”

He noted that that the “goal is to bring it down to lower than 2,000 cases per day which was the pre-surge number.”

In Metro Manila, Duque said that the government would like to bring down the COVID-10 “to less than 500 was the pre-surge number.”

Meanwhile, Duque thanked the Filipino public for complying with the minimum public health standards once again.

“Ang taglay na proteksiyon ng ating minimum health standards is anywhere from 95 to 99 percent (The inherent protection of minimum health standards is anywhere from 95 to 99 percent),” he said.

Duque reiterated the need to comply with the minimum health standards such as wearing face shields, face masks, practicing social distancing, avoidance of congested places and going to well-ventilated areas. “All of these are very practicable solutions so we just need to do these,” he added.

Likewise, Philippine Testing Czar Vince Dizon also agreed with Duque on the importance of complying with the minimum public health standards.

Dizon said when the country recorded as high as 12,000 cases at its peak, the local government units (LGUs), the national government and public worked together.

“That number could have just skyrocketed uncontrollably, we’ve seen it in many other countries but we saw that interventions work and we would like to thank our LGUs because they are the ones at the forefront of this,” Dizon said.

Another clear indication, Dizon said, is the positivity rate.

During the peak of the surge, Dizon said that the positivity rate of National Capital Region (NCR) was up to 30 percent but now down to 11 percent in a matter of few weeks. The national rate, he added, was up to 26 percent but now down to 12 percent.

“This shows that if we do it together, if we do it right - we already know what to do, we just need to execute this and our cases will continue to go down,” Dizon said.