By Karen Ann Macalalad

MAY 11, 2020 – The Philippines will likely extend for another two weeks the restrictions under an enhanced community quarantine in the capital and adjacent areas where cases of coronavirus continue to rise when the 60-day curbs end on May 15.

Authorities are also unlikely to lift the curbs in other areas where clusters of infection were observed like Bacolod, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo and Zamboanga cities.

But beginning last week, the Department of Health has observed a slowdown in the rate of infection, an indication the curve is starting to flatten, a possible reason to ease curbs that has ruined the economy.

Based on available data from the health department, there has been decreasing doubling time of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, which refers to the time it takes for the number of infections to double, as well as positivity rate, which is the percentage of people who tested positive for the virus out of the total number tested.

However, health experts and people from the academe warned the data remained insufficient to support these observations, due to the limited testing capacity of the country.

The current capacity to test unique samples in a day is far from the desired number and the country has limited number of laboratories to process specimens.

FAR FROM TARGET

The Philippine government has, so far, accredited only 26 laboratories out of the 90 applications for COVID-19 screening, setting a goal of conducting 8,000 tests daily by April 30 and 30,000 by end of May.

As of May 9, the daily output of laboratories reported by the DOH were around 5,000 to 7,215. In other countries, tests per day ranged from 40,000 to 120,000. Vietnam alone has 112 laboratories when it only had three in January.

Three months after the Philippines detected its first cases, the country was only able to conduct 157,730 total number of tests on 142,663 individuals as of May 8, less than one percent of the country’s entire 108 million population.

Citing limited resources, the health department has given priority to testing of individuals with mild and severe symptoms of the disease, travel history, and contact with confirmed cases –running the risk of missing people who carry the virus but are asymptomatic.

Based on official open sources gathered by Our World in Data, the Philippines has relatively low testing coverage compared with its neighbors in the Southeast and East Asia.

The country has conducted nearly more than one test per a thousand of people, while Singapore and Hong Kong did over 20 tests per a thousand people.

Indonesia, one of the most populous nations in the world, has so far performed 0.3 test per thousand people. The government aims to conduct 10,000 tests daily.

Experts say a higher testing coverage offers a more precise and better understanding of the pandemic and prevalence of infections.

Another metric being observed is the number of tests per confirmed cases, in order to estimate the number of tests needed as time progresses.

In Vietnam, a case is detected in every 960 tests conducted as of April 29, while Taiwan has over 151 tests per confirmed case as of May 7. The Philippines has performed more than 13 tests per confirmed case as of May 5.

Despite sharing a border with China, the epicenter of the pandemic, Vietnam reported only more than 280 cases due to aggressive testing as early as late January.

The country also imposed early travel restrictions to limit public movement to protect its 96 million population.

Taiwan also reported fewer number of cases at 440, being on guard as early as December 31 against arriving passengers from Wuhan City of China.

On the other hand, the Philippines has already tallied more than 11,000 cases and expects more infections in the coming weeks as it expands the country’s testing program.

TESTING IN THE REGIONS

The government has yet to address the backlog in confirming and reporting the cases, deaths, and recoveries as the data is three to four days old.

Only the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) has been operating since in the early weeks of February after the health department confirmed the infection of a female Chinese tourist on January 30. The results came from a laboratory in Melbourne, Australia as the Philippines has no capable facility to detect the coronavirus.

Seventeen of the accredited laboratories are in Metro Manila, with the RITM and Philippine Red Cross (PRC) capable of conducting 1,500 tests per day.

The capital region accounts for about 65 percent of the 10,610 total cases as of May 9.

The proportion of cases in the capital region decreased from 71 percent since January to April 19, to 56 percent for the period of April 20 to May 9, the Department of Health (DOH) noted in its latest situation briefer.

However, an increasing proportion of cases has been observed in Central Visayas from 2 percent to 30 percent for the similar period.

The region has a total of 1,421 confirmed cases, the second highest reported in the country, according to DOH. Majority of the cases in the province of Cebu were observed in jail facilities and in one village in Cebu City.

To date, there are only two laboratories operating in the region: Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, with a maximum of 500 daily testing capacity, and Cebu TB Reference Laboratory.

The laboratories have tested 11,426 and 85 individuals, respectively.

The Allegiant Regional Care Hospital, on the other hand, is on Stage 4 of the accreditation process.

Next to Metro Manila and Central Visayas, southern Luzon region CALABARZON records a total of 1,257 cases as of May 8. The De La Salle University in Dasmariñas City in Cavite was recently approved to operate on May 9 to ramp up the conduct of tests, while the Batangas Medical Center, San Pablo College Medical Center, and Calamba Medical Center are still on Stage 3.

CONTAINING THE OUTBREAK

The World Health Organization has warned countries against relaxing lockdown protocols prematurely without adequate protocols in place, as another wave of new infections remains possible.

As of May 10, there are now over 4 million individuals who contracted the disease, where more than 279,000 died while more than 1.38 million recovered, based on the tally of Johns Hopkins University.

A separate graph from Our World in Data showed countries has started slowing down the rate, but noted that an additional testing has to be done, since the total number of cases is higher than that of the confirmed cases.

Some governments, however, decided to partially lift imposed rules as countries suffer economic loss, unemployment, and hunger in the pandemic.

The Philippines’ economy, for example, shrank 0.2 percent in the first three months of 2020 from the same period last year.

READ ALSO: CONTRACTION | Philippine economy shrinks for the first time in 20 years

The economy is expected to further slide down due to work stoppage, business closure and suspension of transportation during the second quarter.

Economic managers are hoping to avoid a depression and expecting a rebound by rolling out a 1.3 trillion pesos stimulus package that includes programs for providing safety nets, increasing health capacity and putting liquidity in the economy.

The government has spent more than 40 billion to improve health infrastructure, increasing testing capacity by acquiring 900,000 equipment and 2 million rapid test kits to screen more people, including the asymptomatic as data abroad showed three out of 10 positive cases do not show symptoms.

The best response, so far, to fight the global pandemic is to test, test, test, the first step in the global T3 strategy of test, trace and treat.

Until scientists develop a vaccine or a cure to the highly contagious respiratory disease, the best way to prevent contracting the virus was through social and physical distancing, proper hygiene, and aggressive testing of individuals. (MM)