The Philippines’ death toll from the coronavirus disease might have dropped, but the country’s case fatality rate (CFR) was higher than the fatality average in the southeast Asian region, the Department of Health (DoH) said.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the country’s CFR — the ratio of deaths from total number of infection — is around 4%, lower than the global average of 5.6%. However, it is higher than the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) average of around 3%. She added that although the CFR remained high compared to other countries in Asia — save for Indonesia, whose CFR was almost double the Asean average — it was still an improvement from the death ratio last month.
“People may be wondering if our situation is getting worse.
Based on our data concerning deaths, the answer is no,” the Health official said.
The death toll in mid-June dropped to around 4%, less than the average of around 5.5% last month, according to Vergeire.
The DoH made the clarification following the spike in death toll — 16 and 22 on June 12 and 13.
Dr John Wong of the Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases’ data analytics expert group said the apparent increase was because of the late reporting of deaths, some of which happened months ago but was only reported recently.
“After the actual date of death occurs, it should still be reported to the LGU (local government unit), later on to the regional office and DoH has to validate it, so it would take some time before an actual death is reported,” he added.
The Health department, however, said the speed of reporting of deaths had improved.
“There is a big improvement in reporting of cases,” Vergeire said. “The past reporting delays for deaths have reached for over 20 days, now it is only around seven to eight days.”
She added that the doubling time of deaths also improved from 6.7 days to 10-15 days.
Vergeire earlier said the country was aiming for a doubling time of “over 30 days” to be in a “comfortable position.”
from Gulf Times https://ift.tt/2YC4Rf7
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