Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana encouraged the people in Caloocan City not to be afraid of the coronavirus disease, saying more patients died due to pneumonia and influenza than COVID-19.

"Let's not be afraid of COVID... because its casualty is only one percent, (there were) more (people) dying because of influenza and pneumonia than Covid," Lorenzana said during the visit of the Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic (C.O.D.E.) Team, headed by the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) in Caloocan City on Saturday.

"The key here is to know who are infected with COVID... because maybe 99 percent survive or cured," he said.

"We will inform educate our people, to successfully fight this COVID virus we need the cooperation of everybody," he added.

Lorenzana also mentioned that the government's objective is to flatten the curve within the month so that areas under the general community quarantine (GCQ) maybe placed under moderate GCQ or a more relaxed community quarantine.

"Our objective this month is to flatten or much better to bring down the curve so that maybe after this month of September we can already go to MGCQ to make the lives of our people much easier," he said.

Lorenzana said they visited the city to listen and help the local government address concerned against COVID-19.

"We are not here to audit what you do. We are here to listen to your concerns for us to know how we can help your city to defeat this virus," he said.

"The IATF has resources from the government and private sector that we can use if you need our help. Our objective here is to include everyone, especially the barangay, because we believe in the IATF that the barangay. In fact, I called them as frontliner... the barangay officials implement the quarantine protocols...," he added.

Other government officials who attended the event includes Agriculture Secretary William Dar, Caloocan City Mayor Oscar Malapitan and other officials of Caloocan City.

The visit also highlights the ceremonial turnover of face masks which is part of the "'Mask Para Sa Masa’ campaign, an inter-agency cooperation to provide around 30 million domestically manufactured washable face masks to poor families." Robina Asido/DMS