Palace defends DOH's decision not to release daily COVID updates
MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Tuesday justified the Department of Health's decision to stop releasing daily COVID-19 case bulletins starting next year, saying the government is now focused on its vaccination program.
Last Monday, the DOH announced that it would no longer issue a separate social media card and PDF file of its daily pandemic situation report starting January, citing the need to "streamline public communication." Daily case updates would be provided through the COVID-19 tracker website updated every 4 p.m., the agency said.
"The reason behind that is right now, we are really ramping up our vaccinations and the focus right now is on the vaccination. We have a target that by (the) first quarter of next year, we will achieve the 77 million Filipinos fully vaccinated," acting presidential spokesman Karlo Nograles said at a press briefing.
"So, we will focus on the vaccination and by focusing on the vaccination... we may see that the cases of COVID will be mild and asymptomatic only," he added.
Nograles said while vaccination does not stop the transmission of the virus, it prevents severe and critical cases, hospitalization and deaths.
"So, our focus (would really) be the vaccination rate and looking at hospital utilization rate, looking at critical and severe and even moderate cases. So that will be our basis," he added.
Nograles said the public could still find the pandemic numbers through the DOH's COVID-19 tracker website.
"COVID tracker will suffice for now in providing the regular updates to our countrymen and the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases) will continue to monitor that. We will continue to monitor all of these indicators that we have been looking at from the very start up to now," the Palace official said.
"We continue to monitor the numbers, we continue to report to the public although in a different format...We continue to look at the active cases, the new cases...only the format of reporting will change," he added.
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