
The Department of Health (DOH) is hopeful that the number of new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases being detected daily will continue to decline.
“Hopefully, we will see a continuing decline in the number of new cases reported daily,” said DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III during the pre-SONA forum on Wednesday, July 14.
“We have been able to bring down the number of COVID cases. Our (number of) active cases today is about four percent and our recovery rate is about 95 percent and we have maintained a relatively low case fatality rate at about 1.6 percent of total cases,” he added.
To further bring down the COVID-19 cases, Duque said that it is important to further intensify the implementation of prevent, detect, isolate, treat, and reintegrate (PDITR) strategy. He also emphasized the importance of vaccination.
“We need to do everything, we need to intensify our PDITR strategy. Gusto natin ay mapababa pa lalo ang ating mga kaso (We want to reduce our cases even more),” he said.
Duque also expressed his gratitude to the country’s healthcare workers for their contribution in the fight against COVID-19.
He said that the “continuing improvements in the clinical management of severe to critical COVID cases,” has helped in lowering down the country’s case fatality rate.
“We salute all our healthcare workers--- the doctors, nurses, and all those who have contributed to the successful clinical management of our COVID cases, and also for helping bring down to low level, relatively speaking--- of our deaths,” said Duque.
“Our case fatality rate remains below two percent...much less than the global case fatality rate of about 2.2 percent,” he added.