Ministry feels the pressure
THE increase in COVID-19 cases has put a lot of pressure on the Ministry of Health’s response planning says the ministry’s permanent secretary Dr James Fong.
Responding to a statement from National Federation Party’s vice-president Lenora Qereqeretabua who has labelled the ministry’s COVID-19 communication strategy a disaster,
Dr Fong said their responses have been further affected when their teams had to be stood down.
“Most of us are engaged with sorting and planning our medical response,” he said.
On Ms Qereqeretabua queries on who prepared, reviewed, authorised, or caused the delay of the daily COVID-19 release, Dr Fong said their main problem was in verifying the data to protect against duplication, incorrect address and transmission chains.
“Given the scale of the outbreak, we are no longer working out transmission chains, thus for us, the use of the word clusters is no longer relevant.
“This is the basis of our transition to the GIS Maps.
“Our verification now will be focused on avoiding duplications and incorrect addresses.
“As such we hope to ensure a more timely turnaround.
“The senior management team with me does final verification and the same team also oversees response coordination.
“Response coordination is our priority but I am working with a bigger communication team and we hope to facilitate more timely statements and data moving forward.”
Ms Qereqeretabua described as disconcerting and unacceptable what the party believed to be extremely poor information delivery to the public on the coronavirus crisis by the Government.