Coronavirus: Philippines braces for ‘perfect storm’ as rainy season brings dengue, flu, measles
- Doctors fear the surge in seasonal diseases will overwhelm a health system already struggling to cope with the Covid-19 outbreak
- The government’s pandemic response has come under fire, with top officials often clashing publicly and releasing contradictory statements
Apart from concerns about the capacity of health centres to treat patients, many of the seasonal illnesses, such as dengue, exhibit similar symptoms as the novel coronavirus in the beginning stages, worrying doctors.
“June is [the onset of] the rainy season. That means dengue, flu, measles. And with a pandemic … this will create a perfect storm,” said Dr Benjamin Co, head of the paediatric infectious disease section at the Catholic Church-run University of Santo Tomas Hospital in Manila.
“These are diseases that in the beginning, present in a clinically similar way: fever, colds, cough, sore throat, et cetera. And we may end up mistaking all these patients for Covid-19 patients,” he said. “It will trigger an avalanche of testing which may become expensive for the ordinary people.”
At the nearby Philippine General Hospital, the state-designated Covid-19 referral facility, its spokesman Dr Jonas del Rosario had similar worries.
“When it rains, it floods, and so many get sick,” said del Rosario, a cardiologist. “I hope by that time, the coronavirus will be contained because if not, it will really slow us down. That’s really going to overwhelm the health care system.”
The Philippines on Saturday recorded 13,777 coronavirus infections and 863 deaths. A total of 3,177 people had recovered, the health ministry said.
On Friday, five academics linked to the University of the Philippines issued a study that said the coronavirus in the country was “not yet controlled”.
“We are still in the early part of managing this crisis. The pandemic is ongoing and continues to be a clear and present danger to us all,” the paper said.
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There has been public criticism over the Philippine government’s efforts to contain the coronavirus, which has seen top officials backtracking on important pronouncements and even publicly disagreeing among themselves.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, health secretary Francisco Duque III repeatedly told senators that the country had successfully weathered “the first wave” of coronavirus infections.
“We are now on the second wave and doing everything we can to flatten the pandemic curve,” Duque said.
Carlito Galvez Jnr, head of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, supported Duque’s assessment.
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But Senator Francis Pangilinan said he strongly doubted the health chief’s conclusions.
Pangilinan pointed out that the country had tested a mere 0.2 per cent of the population, while in comparison, Vietnam had tested 2.8 per cent. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines has one of the highest mortality rates and the lowest rates of recovery, he added.
“How can you say the number of new cases are falling when you are not testing [enough]?” the opposition senator questioned.
Even presidential spokesman Harry Roque, presidential executive secretary Salvador Medialdea and interior and local governments secretary Eduardo Año disagreed with Duque’s “second wave” announcement.
Doctors in the country, who rarely express open disagreement with the health secretary, also said Duque’s statement was not credible.
Dr Co from the University of Santo Tomas Hospital, who is also a mathematician and a trained molecular and clinical pharmacologist, said the pandemic was still on its “first wave” but numbers were steadying.
The Philippines had reached a plateau, with “an average of 250 cases over the past month”, Dr Co said, but it had yet to flatten the curve of infection.
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Dr Anthony Leachon, a health reform advocate and one of the advisers to the Covid-19 task force, said if the country was already on the second wave, “then we must revert to the enhanced community quarantine”, referring to the lockdown placed on Luzon island on March 17.
“Historically, the second wave [of a pandemic] is more devastating than the first,” Dr Leachon added.
Dr Co estimated that it would take about four weeks for the Philippines to see new daily virus cases slowing to “the low-100s level”.
“This is on the premise that with increased testing, we will not see a higher rate of confirmed cases,” he said. “At the current trend, we are seeing around 8 per cent of confirmed cases for every 1,000 tests, meaning about 80 will test positive for every 1,000 people tested.”
As for the Luzon lockdown, which was eased on May 15, Dr Co said it needed a systematic approach.
“I think work is essential and people need to get back to their lives, [but it] needs to be staggered and phased more slowly,” he said. “We need to try making sure that people get used to moving around in a ‘new normal’ way. The informal settlers are the difficult part to police.”
Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank, agreed with Dr Co’s concern.
“We need to take a hard look at our numbers and evaluate the state of the lockdown,” he said. “A premature end of the lockdown could have a dangerous consequence if the pandemic is still here by the rainy season. Our aim [should be] to contain or eradicate the virus by June, so we can move on.”
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