A day after COVID-19 cases in the country surged past 35,000 (and roughly a month after easing quarantine measures), Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque gave the government another pat on the back for doing the, well, bare minimum.

In a press briefing earlier today, Roque said that we’re “winning” in the fight against COVID-19, highlighting the lockdown’s effectiveness in preventing cases from reaching as much as three million.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque says PH could have had 3.6 million COVID 19 cases if a lockdown was not imposed. | @LeilasINQ

— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) June 29, 2020

“In terms of positivity rate, case doubling, mortality rate, we are winning. We have limited the cases to 35,000 instead of what could have been three million,” he said.

To put this into perspective, the total number of cases worldwide is over 10 million, with the US recording the most cases at almost 2.6 million as of writing.

Roque also questioned the World Health Organization’s claim that the Philippines recorded the fastest rise in COVID-19 cases in the Western Pacific Region.

Roque disagrees with WHO that PH has fastest rise in COVID 19 cases in Western Pacific, says numbers should be considered in relation to its population. PH should not be compared to Singapore which has a small population, he says. | @LeilasINQ

— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) June 29, 2020

Data from the WHO showed that the Philippines recorded 8,143 new cases since June 16, which is the highest compared to the 22 countries in the same region.

“I beg to disagree. Kung titignan natin ang pagtaas ng kaso, dapat ‘yan [ay] in relation to your population,” he said, insisting that if the recorded cases in a country are divided per million population instead, the country on top of the list should be India, which WHO classified under the South-East Asian Region, not the Western Pacific Region.

Roque also admitted a few weeks ago that it would be hard for the Philippines to reduce COVID-19 cases to zero. In an interview with PTV, he said that New Zealand was able to eradicate the virus because its land area is only as big as Luzon and its population is just around five million.

Roque does have a point though―at the press briefing, he said “the numbers speak for themselves” and they do. As cases in the country surge past 35,000 and COVID-19 hotspots like Cebu City record higher tallies by the day, this should be a sign for the government to beef up its initiatives or roll out new measures to address the health crisis.

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Photo from Inquirer