DOH says COVID-19 fatality rate going down in June
The Department of Health (DOH) has seen a decrease in the number of patients dying due to coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
In a virtual press briefing on Sunday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the number of fatalities for June is lower compared to their records for the month of May.
"To those asking whether the situation worsened? Based on our data on mortality, the answer is 'no'," she said.
“From 5.52 fatality rate last May 31, our fatality rate already decreased to 4.24 percent, as of June 13. This is lower compared to the case fatality rate globally,” Vergeire said.
Vergeire said the global case fatality rate (CFR) is 5.6 percent.
"We have seen a good CFR improvement in the country… The mortality cases have not gone up like March and April," she said.
The health official also apologized for the reported 38 deaths last June 12 and 13 which she said caused public concern.
“Last June 12, we reported 16 deaths. On June 13, we reported 22 deaths. These numbers may have resulted in causes of concerns among the public. We apologize for this,” said Vergeire.
“Just like we have previously said, these numbers were based on the day it was reported to the public and not on the same day they died,” she added.
Vergerie said of the 22 reported deaths last Saturday, only four patients or 18 percent died in the month of June, specifically on June 3, 4, 6, and 9; while the remaining 18 deaths occurred in the previous months but were only recently submitted to the DOH-Epidemiology Bureau.
According to Dr. John Wong, epidemiologist working for the Inter-Agency Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases, the deaths have continued to go down since April.
“Until two days ago and we had two spikes in the number of deaths, 16 and 22, but these cases were late reported cases,” Wong said.
“The actual date of death would occur first but that has still to be reported to LGU (local government unit) then to regional offices, then DOH. The DOH has to validate it against the death certificate so it takes some time before actual death is reported so that explains the delay in the reporting,” he explained.
Wong said based on their graphs, deaths remain low at nine cases per day.
“We still continue to have a very low death rate,” he said.
He also noted that the reporting of death cases has consistently improved from 22 days delay now to seven day delay.
“If we compare ourselves to the rest of the world, we can see that overtime, our case fatality rate has continued to go down… we are about four percent now compared to the global average of about six percent,” Wong said.
Based on the latest report released on Sunday, the number of recorded fatalities was 14 bringing the total to 1,088 deaths while 248 recoveries were recorded increasing the number of recovered patients to 5,954.
A total of 539 COVID-19 cases were reported bringing the total number of cases to 25,920, of which 97.5 percent or 18,138 of most active cases were mild, 2.1 percent or 394 were asymptomatic, 0.3 percent or 63 were severe, and 0.1 percent or 17 were critical.
Of the total, 366 were fresh cases while 173 were late cases. Ella Dionisio/DMS
