By Analou De Vera The Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday (May 21) clarified that the Philippines is still on its first wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, retracting its previous statement that the country is already dealing with the second wave. "Earlier, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque clarified that we are still on the first wave of the epidemic. The DOH confirms that, yes, we are in the first wave driven by local community transmission," said DOH-Health Promotions and Communications Service Director Dr. Beverly Ho in a press briefing. “We apologize for the confusion that this has caused,” Ho added. Ho said that the first wave began when the country started to observe local transmission of the dreaded illness. “Kung matatandaan nyo po, local community transmission happened nung nagsimula po tayong mag-report ng cases ng mga kababayan natin na walang exposure sa mga positive cases o kaya walang travel history. (If you will recall, local community transmission happened when we started reporting cases of our countrymen who had no exposure to positive cases or no travel history). We are still in this wave,” she said. Ho said the peak of the current wave occurred when the Philippines recorded 538 new cases at the end of March. “Since then, the average cases has declined to around 220 cases per day. This is the reason why we are saying that we have started to flatten the curve,” she said. In a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said that the country is in its second wave of COVID-19 transmission. This was echoed by Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire in the DOH presscon on Wednesday afternoon, when she said the first epidemiological wave happened last January when the country had only three COVID-19 cases. Vergeire added that the second epidemiological wave-- which can also be considered the “first major wave”--- happened last March when the local transmission of COVID-19 was recorded. Duque walked back his statement on Thursday, telling members of the House committee on health that what he told the Senate was a statement of an "epidemiologic fact." “Either way, it can be construed that what we have today is the first major wave of sustained transmission,” Duque said. Read more: Duque clarifies: PH now in ‘first major wave’ of sustained transmission Early this month, epidemiologist Dr. John Wong, who is working with the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) sub-technical working group (TWG) on data analytics, also reported that the country was already on its second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same House health committee hearing on Thursday, Wong explained that Duque had been referring to the first wave of sustained community transmission that started in March. With this confusion, Ho said that they were hoping that this “does not in any way distract us from what we really need to do to change the course of this pandemic.” “The power to change the course of this pandemic lies in all of us. How flat the curve is and how long it will remain… how good we are keeping in with minimum health standards,” Ho said. Meanwhile, former Health chief Esperanza Cabral also agreed with the government that the country is still in the first wave, but reminded it to focus on how to better prepare the country for the next waves of COVID-19 transmission. “I agree with Secretary Medialdea and Roque that we consider ourselves as in the first wave,” Cabral said. “I think it does not make any difference whether we are in the first or second wave, but we should decide on one nomenclature and stick with it,” she added “This hair splitting when it comes to whether we are in the first and second wave only serves to confuse the public and take our attention away from the job at hand, which is to make sure we are prepared for the expected next wave,” she added.