Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 30)— The country’s daily death toll from COVID-19 is declining, though at a slow pace, a Department of Health official said Wednesday.
From a record high of 123 coronavirus-related deaths per day in April, the Philippines is now logging a daily average of 63 fatalities, DOH epidemiologist Alethea de Guzman said Wednesday.
“Tuloy-tuloy [ang] pagbaba ng ating mga deaths, subalit may kabagalan po talaga,” De Guzman said in an online town hall session. “Nakita rin namin na iyong mga lugar kung saan tayo ay nakaka-observe ng pinakamarami o sustained na dami ng deaths ay ‘yun ding mga lugar kung saan medyo may kataasan ang ating utilization rates.”
[Translation: The number of deaths (per day) kept on decreasing, albeit slowly… We also saw that areas with a sustained number of deaths were the same ones that have high healthcare utilization rates.]
She added the situation is “more felt” in the Visayas and Mindanao.
De Guzman said their present goal is to bring down the number of fatalities to the pre-surge average of 29.
The Philippines so far has 1,408,058 infections, of which 1.74% or 24,557 cases resulted in deaths, while 94.7% or 1,333,464 cases were tagged as recovered.
