Ateneo de Manila High School suspended its classes for 10 days starting today after three of its students were found positive for Influenza A(H1N1) virus.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III yesterday confirmed the addition of eight new cases, but Ateneo’s reported cases last night brought the new tally to eleven, bringing to 57 the total number of infected individuals in the country.
In an advisory posted on its website, Ateneo management announced that High School principal Fr. Raymundo Benedict Hizon received the report of the boy’s infection in the afternoon.
“All three cases are mild. The three infected boys are in fact already feeling better, and are advised to rest at home and continue with their self-quarantine, with no need for hospitalization,” the advisory stated.
Late in the night, the Ateneo Grade School was also reported to have suspended classes.
Duque earlier announced that there were six new cases at De La Salle University-Taft, one of them a 17-year-old American female, and a 16-year-old Filipino male student at DLSU-St. Benilde College.
The total number of cases for DLSU-Taft is now 13.
Another patient, a 44-year-old Filipino male, had a history of travel in the United States.
The DOH regional director in Pangasinan also confirmed that a patient who came from Hawaii was found positive for the virus but is already in good condition.
A female high school student of St. Andrew’s School in Parañaque who just arrived from Canada also tested positive yesterday.
Classes in that school have been temporarily suspended.
Racking up statistics
Duque also clarified that while the Philippines is among the countries in the Western Pacific region with the highest number of cases, this is primarily because of aggressive contact tracing.
He said the Department of Health (DOH) is actively combing for possible infections and this is contributing to the continued rise in the number of cases in the country.
“The registered cases (in other countries) are low but we think it’s because of surveillance. Maybe they are not aggressively looking for cases so it appears that cases there are increasing slowly,” he claimed in a radio interview.
He said the Philippines does not close its airports to international travelers and that there are travelers who fail to heed DOH’s call to observe a 10-day quarantine period upon arrival.
Records of the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific Region showed that as of June 8, Australia posted the highest number of cases at 1,051.
This was followed by Japan with 410; China with 134; South Korea with 47; Singapore with 15; New Zealand with 17; Vietnam with nine and Malaysia with five.
“Singapore is small but it has the highest number of cases if we base it on the (percentage of) total population,” he noted.
New strategy
Through all this, Duque met with WHO Technical Adviser Dr. Hiroshi Oshitani to discuss the DOH’s plan to shift its A(H1N1) control strategy from containment to mitigation, amid the continuing rise of cases.
“We also talked about the country’s surveillance capabilities, laboratory capacity, and other measures such as school closures and contact-tracing to mitigate the effects of A(H1N1),” he said.
Under the mitigation strategy, the DOH will do away with contract tracing and will, instead, do early detection and aggressive treatment of cases, especially those with pre-existing conditions like diabetes, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and others.
Those with mild symptoms can be managed and monitored at home and only patients at risk of developing complications will be sent to hospital.
A(H1N1) cases will then become part of the DOH’s influenza-like illnesses surveillance activity and one of its “notifiable diseases.”
No comments:
Post a Comment