ILOILO City – The Department of Health (DOH) is adopting new “surveillance definitions” or nomenclatures in the reporting of cases that for several weeks it had been calling as persons under investigation (PUI), persons under investigation (PUM) and positive cases.
Beginning today, DOH would be transitioning to three new terms: “suspect case”, “probable case” and “confirmed case”, according to Regional Director Marlyn Convocar.
A “confirmed case” is “any individual, irrespective of presence or absence of clinical signs and symptoms, who was laboratory-confirmed for COVID-19 in a test conducted at the national reference laboratory, a subnational reference laboratory, and/or officially accredited laboratory testing facility.”
A “probable case” is a suspect case who fulfills anyone of the following:
* a suspect case whom testing for COVID-19 is inconclusive
* suspect who underwent testing for COVID-19 but not conducted in a national or subnational reference laboratory or officially accredited laboratory for COVID-19 confirmatory testing
* suspect case for whom testing could not be performed for any reason
A “suspect case” is a person who is presenting with any of the conditions:
* all SARI (severe acute respiratory infection) cases where no other etiology fully explains the clinical presentation
* ILI (influenza-like illness) cases with any one of the following: with no other etiology that fully explains the clinical presentation and a history of travel to or residence in an area that reported local transmission of COVID-19 disease during the 14 days prior to symptom onset, or with contact to a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 during the 14 days prior to the onset of symptoms
* individuals with fever or cough or shortness of breath or other respiratory signs or symptoms fulfilling any one of the following conditions: aged 60 years and above; with a comorbidity; assessed as having a high-risk pregnancy; health worker
According to Convocar, these new labels were in the Philippine Institute for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases’ (PSMID) Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) on COVID-19 that DOH has adopted.
These definitions are consistent with the latest World Health Organization Global Surveillance for COVID-19 disease interim guidance (as of March 20, 2020), Convocar added.
“PSMID’s CPG on COVID-19 shall be used in the clinical management of COVID-19 cases in all hospitals and health facilities, both public and private, subject to continuous update by the society,” stated Health secretary Francisco Duque III in Department Memorandum Order No. 2020-0138 dated March 31, 2020./PN
