Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire warned Filipinos against being complacent with Covid-19, saying the country is not yet “out of the woods” as far as the pandemic is concerned
Asked for her reaction after Presidential spokesman Harry Roque claimed that “the worst is over” for the Philippines in the fight against Covid-19 and to the tweet of Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. that the curve has flattened, Vergeire reminded Filipinos against such conclusions.
“I don’t think that this is the time to make conclusions at this point in our situation regarding this pandemic,” Vergeire said stressing that there are still challenges that needs to be faced.
Vergeire also cited that there is also a threat of a new variant that was detected in United Kingdom and other countries.
She also said that they “veer away” from using the words “curve and “flattening”.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” the DOH official said stressing that there has been a 30 percent decrease on the output of laboratories that affected the number if cases reported.
“So, this not really for us to do the analysis… kailangan pang makita ang [we still need to see the] future numbers in the coming days,” she said.
As of January 8, the DOH recorded an additional of 1,776, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 483, 852.
There were also 285 recoveries and 8 deaths.
Of the total number of cases, 5.2 percent (25,158) are active, 92.9 percent (449,330) have recovered, and 1.94 percent (9,364) have died.