The Department of Health (DOH) clarified that 96 percent of more than 22,000 COVID-19 patients who are recovering are mild cases. The DOH said some of them chose to just stay home. Barangay health emergency response teams (BHERTs) have been directed to monitor them as they undergo 14-day home quarantine.
“Unfortunately, when we try to review all of our numbers, we saw that a lot of these, ang dami ng di na namonitor ng BHERT kung sila ba ay naka-recover o they died (a lot these are not monitored by the BHERT if they recovered or died),” USec. Maria Rosario Vergeire disclosed.
“So ang dami, kaya nagbuo kami ng Oplan Recovery. Itong Oplan Recovery, we created a team. Sila lang ang tututok sa numbers na nakita natin na wala pang outcomes hanggang ngayon (There are a lot of them so we came up with Oplan Recovery. Through Oplan Recovery, we created a team. They will focus on the numbers with no outcome until now),” Vergeire added.
The DOH is also looking at the possibility of reducing the quarantine period for mild cases to seven days.
A study showed that an individual confirmed positive of having the virus is no longer contagious by the tenth day since symptoms have come out. The DOH has already changed its protocols on discharging patients wherein two negative RT-PCR tests are no longer needed.
As of June 26, there are now 34,073 COVID-19 cases in the country after 788 fresh and 218 late cases were reported. The recovery count increased to 9,182 and the death toll rose to 1,224.
