DOH: VIRUS CASES KEEP RISING DUE TO MORE TESTS, MEASURES IGNORED

COVID-19 bug in real time and described the current efforts as “passive surveillance.”

The term refers to a system where the health service just receives reports submitted by hospitals, clinics, public health centers and other sources, Villanueva said, citing a definition by the World Health Organization.

Passive surveillance is an inexpensive way to cover large areas, he said, but it could lead to discrepancies and delays in data. The government should be doing active surveillance, which would entail gathering information from communities and using the data to come up with a response tailor-fit for the area, he said.

“Our government should take a good hard look at its current strategy. The rising number of cases, especially in the past three days, should ... be a red flag. We should make the necessary adjustments immediately because we cannot afford another lockdown,” Villanueva said in a statement.

Reporting numbers daily and apprehending violators of quarantine and health measures are not enough, he said.

The government should look for coronavirus hot spots and conduct random tests to know how wide the virus has spread, Villanueva said.

Without active monitoring, people are just surprised by data that shows the virus has spread to their area, he said.

Gov’t mishandling crisis

According to Villanueva, the lack of real-time monitoring of the coronavirus shows how health authorities were mishandling the crisis.

He warned that poor handling of the crisis could erode business confidence and hamper government efforts to revive the economy.

“Business confidence is tied with trust in the health sector management. Industries and productive economic sectors won’t risk resuming operations if there is a strong possibility of another lockdown, which would be disastrous for our economy and, consequently, for our workers,” Villanueva said.

Malacañang said the increasing number of coronavirus infections was not surprising, as there was no vaccine yet for COVID-19, and that Filipinos should not worry about it because the majority of the cases were mild or asymptomatic.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Filipinos should learn to “dance” with the virus, that is, learn to live with it because it would be around for a long time.

“The cases may increase, but while we protect our vulnerable, while we observe our minimum health standards, and while we expand our test, trace and treat strategy, we can manage to live amid COVID-19. That is what we should do,” Roque told a press briefing on Tuesday.

He said the government was changing its strategy in the fight against the virus by shifting the responsibility of containing it to the local governments, the private sector and the citizens themselves.

Local officials, he said, would now enforce targeted lockdowns—barangay, street or building—where there are infections.

“Yesterday, we met with the Metro Manila mayors. They know the areas with increasing cases of COVID-19 and they are actively closing these down in accordance with our policy of localized lockdowns instead of community lockdowns. That is the big change in our strategy,” Roque said.

He urged businesses to be more active by testing their employees while the government expanded its testing, contact tracing, and isolation and treatment capacity.