BY MARTIN SADONGDONG
About 91.5 percent of the total active coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients in the country are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, according to National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr.
President Duterte, in a meeting with COVID-19 task force officials on Monday night that was aired Tuesday, wondered why the Philippines has a high number of reported recoveries.
“Secretary, I know this is not your main line but bakit maraming recoveries ang Pilipinas vis-a-vis with other countries?” Duterte asked Galvez.
To this, Galvez responded: “Sir, marami po sa atin, sir asymptomatic po, sir, at saka, sir, mild cases.”
Galvez then presented a graph to Duterte where he said out of the total 55,236 active cases in the country, around 50,000 are mild or asymptomatic.
It was not clear if the data presented by Galvez was up to date but according to a report from the Department of Health (DoH), the Philippines recorded 194,252 cases as of Monday.
Of these, 59,200 were tagged as active cases where 91.5 pecent were mild, 6.1 percent were asymptomatic, 1.4 pecent were critical, and one percent was severe.
Meanwhile, there were also 132,042 recoveries and 3,010 deaths.
Last week, World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific regional director Takeshi Kasai lauded the country’s efforts to improve the health care system to curb the spread of the viral disease.
Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe, WHO representative to the Philippines, told the Filipino people not to be discouraged by the high number of COVID-19 cases since the country has one of the lowest proportion of fatalities in the Southeast Asia.
He said among the factors that contributed to this was the increase in the number of health care facilities, and the establishment of testing laboratories and isolation centers around the country. (Martin A. Sadongdong)
