MANILA, Philippines — The World Health Organization called on local governments to strengthen the implementation of protocols on the ground and the public to continue practicing precautionary measures as the country experiences another increase in COVID-19 cases.
For four consecutive days, health authorities have reported over 3,000 additional cases, bringing to over 597,000 the total number of infections in the country. Of these, 39,330 were active cases.
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This is happening as the country begins its COVID-19 inoculation program, with health workers prioritized to get the first shots.
“We need to ensure that public health measures are fully implemented and that authorities are really implementing early detection, early quarantine and isolation of cases and if necessary, very limited lockdowns in places, in sitios where we’re seeing clustering of such cases to prevent further spread,” Rabindra Abeyasinghe, WHO country representative, said in a briefing Tuesday.
“We really want the local leadership to lead in this effort so we can ensure that we won’t go back to a situation that we had last July, August when we had to go to more larger level lockdowns and quarantining of populations,” he said, referring to the period when the country was experiencing surge following the easing of quarantine measures. At the time, exhausted medical frontliners, warned a collapse of the healthcare system and called for a “timeout.”
Abeyasinghe also stressed the need for solidarity and coordination among local government units, especially in Metro Manila, to have a uniform implementation of protocols.
He also reminded the public to comply with minimum public health protocols and to practice extra caution. The Department of Health said Thursday that the public’s non-compliance with anti-COVID-19 measures was the “underlying cause of why cases are increasing.”
Not second wave
The WHO official also said the recent rise in COVID-19 cases in the country, especially in the capital region, is a “spike” in the current epidemic wave.
“I wouldn’t classify this as a second wave because if you’re talking about second wave, we should have seen a complete flattening of the curve. In the case of NCR, we didn’t see that kind of flattening,” Abeyasinghe said.
“It would rather be another spike in the ongoing wave,” he added.
Abeyansinghe also said that the increase in COVID-19 cases cannot be solely attributed to the presence of more transmissible coronavirus variants in the Philippines.
“Part of the surge we are seeing within NCR may be attributed to the presence of these new variants but we believe it’s not entirely being driven by the new variants because the number of cases detected and confirmed as opposed to the number of samples checked is limited,” he said.
Local authorities have so far detected 58 cases of B.1.351, or the variant that was first seen in South Africa. Aside from being more infectious than other variants, it may also have an impact on vaccine efficacy.
Meanwhile, 118 cases of B.1.1.7, or the variant first identified in the United Kingdom, were reported in the country.
The government is not yet considering imposing more stringent community quarantine measures, noting that localized responses such as granular lockdowns are the most appropriate strategies at the moment.