Can’t see the forest for the trees: Palace defends gov’t efforts despite coronavirus surge

By Prince Golez

Malacañang on Sunday defended the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that people critical of the administration could not “see the forest for the trees.”

The lockdown measures imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus has helped the government improve its health system capacity and save thousands of lives despite its enormous economic costs, according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque.

“We find it unfortunate that some quarters cannot seem to see the forest for the trees when they cite the cumulative number of cases and blatantly ignore the rest of the COVID-19 data,” Roque said in a statement.

“As I have said in my previous briefings, the University of the Philippines earlier predicted that we would have more than three million Covid-19 cases if the current government did not act decisively,” he added.

Meanwhile, Roque said that the Covid-19 cases are still increasing as testing becomes more aggressive.

The virus, he added, is not going away easily until a vaccine is developed and made available to the world.

“It is for this reason that the government is serious in looking at science in making decisions, such as the country’s case doubling rate, or the number of days it takes for cases to double, the utilization of critical care facilities and the case fatality rate which now stands at 2.7% which is far lower than the global average of 5.5%, as of July 19,” the Palace official explained.

Roque likewise mentioned a “tremendous” increase in the number of recoveries and a sharp decline in fatalities from the viral disease.

“Nonetheless, we sympathize with the families who lost their members and loved ones due to Covid-19. We believe that one life lost is one too many and that these numbers will not lull us to a false sense of security but instead make us work double time in improving our response against Covid-19,” he said.

Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)