MANILA – The Department of Health (DOH) warned for a possible community-level transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in a short span of time as confirmed cases of the fatal disease have increased to 49.
DOH Assistant Secretary Ma. Rosario Vergeire said Wednesday that 16 new cases were recorded from various hospitals in Metro Manila.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, meanwhile, said if ever the community-level transmission transpires, a lockdown in certain communities is imminent and a shift to a higher Code Red level.
“What we have now is localized transmission in the areas we have earlier mentioned. But the situation can very quickly progress into a community transmission, which means, there could be a larger area of affected communities,” Duque said during the hearing of the House Committee on Health on Wednesday.
“I have said time and again that it’s going to be a very real occurrence over the very short term,” he added.
Community transmission occurs when countries are already experiencing “larger outbreaks of local transmission” of the disease, according to the World Health Organization.
The Philippines is currently under a state of public health emergency after it was placed under Code Red sublevel 1 over the weekend, indicating at least one local transmission reported.
“When evidence points to community transmission, we will resort first to a localized lockdown, rather than the whole NCR locking down. We have to be careful on the implications of imposing a metro-wide lockdown,” Duque said.
Duque also said that the government’s imposition of a travel ban on mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau helped delay the transmission of the virus.
“We were among the countries that imposed absolute travel ban on persons and nationals coming from China and its special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macau,” Duque said.
“The Inter-Agency Task Force believes that this move helped delay by a month the entry of the COVID virus in local communities,” he added.
While the DOH’s reporting system seemed problematic, there was no deliberate intention” to keep from the public necessary information about the issue, Duque said.
Based on the latest count from DOH, there were 33 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 30 patients admitted in hospitals mostly in Metro Manila.
The first three COVID-19 cases in the country are the Chinese visitors who earlier tested positive for the virus in the Philippines – one of them died, while the remaining two have recovered and left the country./PN
