It would take two to three months for the Philippines to flatten the curve of confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, according to a Filipino scientist.
Dr. Darwin Bandoy Assistant Professor of the University of California, Davis, told ABS-CBN News that COVID-19 cases in the Philippines will soar to 250,000 in a do-nothing situation.
“My estimate is that to prevent the current trajectory, we need a few more weeks and months to reduce that so that we will not overburden our healthcare, which is already struggling as of the moment,” he explained.
“My model is a do-nothing scenario, meaning we don’t implement lockdown, the peak number of cases in my estimate is around 250,000, that includes the asymptomatics but the approximate estimate is 1 to 3 percent of the 250,000 would be severe cases,” he added.
He recommended the extension of the movement restrictions and urged the country to implement physical distancing measures, massive disinfection, and mass testing.
“If we remove the enhanced community quarantine on April 13 and will resume to normal activity at April 14, the epidemic curve would rise again. So, based on these predictive models, I wouldn’t recommend removing it so it should be extended,” he said.
The scientist added that the country needs to boost its number of ventilators available for severe cases of coronavirus.“If our severe cases went beyond that, it would be like Italy. We would be selecting who will die or not,” he warned.
He also rejected the opening of schools right now as it can worsen the situation, adding that opening schools would promote further spread of the disease based on several studies on contagions.
