President Duterte has acknowledged the unsavory milestone of having recorded over two million coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, but it didn't take him long to find a reason to commend Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III over a supposed silver lining.
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"The Philippines has breached the two-million mark in COVID cases. Kaya medyo ganun karami po ang tinamaan ng COVID (That's how many have been stricken with COVID)," Duterte said during the pre-recorded "Talk to the People" public briefing on late Thursday night, Sept. 2.
It was Wednesday when the Department of Health (DOH) tallied 14,216 new COVID infections, which resulted to the then-running total of 2,003,955 cases.
"However, ang kunswelo natin (a consolation for us) is that 1.8 million of these have recovered. So mayroon na lang 200,000 na wala (So we're missing only 200,000)," Duterte said.
"And that is a very good reflection of what our health people are doing and I would like also to commend Secretary Duque for that," the Chief Executive added.
Multiple sectors have been asking for Duque's resignation as health chief, initially for the supposed bungled response to the pandemic dating back to early last year.
Recently, Duque has been in hot water for the alleged deficiencies on DOH’s usage of its P67-billion COVID-19 funds, as per the Commission on Audit's (COA) audit report for 2020.
Duterte has been a staunch defender of Duque in his late night briefings, going as far to say that he would stand by the Cabinet official no matter what.
The President also chose to look at the bright side of things when he learned about the country’s recent single-day record for new COVID-19 infections, which was over 22,000.