Drilon noted that the increasing rate of infection in the Philippines is now reaching 12 to 13 percent in the past two weeks from below 10 percent early on in the outbreak.
The Philippines has overtaken Indonesia as the Southeast Asian country with the most number of COVID-19 cases with 119, 460 compared to Indonesia with 118,753 cases last August 6. “I’ve heard that they are attributing the surge in the number of cases in the increased testing capacity. Ang hindi nila binabanggit ay ang pagtaas ng positivity rate,” he pointed out.
“Our effort to prevent the spread of the virus is totally falling, because the virus continues to multiply. That is what we must arrest. We must take advantage of the lockdown to increase our contact tracing efforts,” he said.