The Department of Health (DOH) said Wednesday the public should expect an “irregularly high number” of COVID-19 cases in the coming days as laboratories nationwide submit complete data.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said there are confirmed coronavirus cases that are yet included in the latest tally report. DOH earlier required the laboratories to have the patient’s addresses and contact numbers to the information they submit to DOH’s database.
Not all 115 COVID-19 testing centers were able to comply with the requirement, which took effect on September 1.
“This means there are confirmed cases per day that had not yet been reported officially and will come out this week because laboratories are able to comply now,” Vergeire said.
“We may have an irregularly high number of cases in the coming days as cases from these laboratories get reported. We will ensure to highlight which of these cases were late reports,” she said, adding the DOH expects that this would only be a “one time occurrence.”
The health department issued the directive after local government units expressed concerns that delays in contact tracing were caused by incomplete information.
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DOH: Expect ‘irregularly high number’ of COVID-19 cases in next days
As of September 8, the Philippines has 52,893 active cases of COVID-19 after recording 185,178 recoveries and 3,916 deaths.
University of the Philippines professor and OCTA Research Team fellow Dr. Guido David earlier said the country has flattened the COVID-19 curve.
He said the virus’ reproductive number in the country decreased to around 0.95 from 0.99 last week.
David also noted that the positivity rate in the country also went down from 19 percent to the current 12 percent.
Vergeire, however, said that “nothing is certain at this point,” but she cited improvements in contact tracing response and hospital and critical utilization rate.
“We are very cautious in issuing statements regarding these improvements although we would want the people to know that we are seeing improvements and there are good indicators but we still advise that we continue to comply with minimum health standards,” she said.