Amid Europe surge, metrics used for border control: DOH

MANILA – The Philippines is using metrics based on World Health Organization (WHO) standards to help in its border control, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Saturday.

The assurance was made amid the coronavirus surge in Europe, which is now back at the Covid-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic epicenter.

Vergeire said the system Manila is using is also derived from the United States Centers for Disease Control, which monitors the incidence rate of Covid-19 in countries.

“Tinitingnan natin iyong two-week growth rate din nila, tinitingnan natin iyong testing capacity nila. So with this kind of analysis that we have adopted, nakikita po natin kung ano iyong mga bansa na dapat niri-restrict natin, that is why we have green, yellow and red countries (We look at the two-week growth rates as well as the testing capacity of a country. So this is the kind of analysis that we have adopted, through this, we see what countries we should restrict, this is why we have green, yellow, and red countries),” she said.

“So sa ngayon, iyan po ang pinapatupad natin and we are assured na ito pong ating classification na ito is helping the country in our border control (This is what we’re using now and we are assured that this classification is helping the country in its border control),” she added.

At present, The Faroe Islands and the Netherlands have been placed under the Philippines’ red list.

Based on the latest data from WHO released last November 16, the increasing trend in new global weekly cases continued from November 8 to 14, with over 3.3 million new cases reported — a 6 percent growth as compared to the previous week.

The WHO said the highest numbers of new cases for that week were from the United States at 550,684 new cases, the Russian Federation at 275,579, Germany at 254,436, the United Kingdom 252,905, and Turkey at 180,167.

“The regions reporting the highest weekly case incidence per 100,000 population were the European Region (230 new cases per 100,000 population) and the Region of the Americas (74.2 new cases per 100,000 population),” the WHO said.

“[T]hese same two regions reported the highest weekly incidence in deaths, of 3.0 and 1.3 per 100,000 population, respectively,” it added.

Last November 4, WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Henri Kluge warned that Europe and Central Asia could see another half a million Covid-19 fatalities by the first of February next year and 43 countries in the region could face “high to extreme stress” on hospital beds at some point through the same period.