In deep shit
The numbers coming out of the Department of Health (DoH) are not inspiring.
I’m writing this piece on a Monday night, hours after the DoH had tweaked its manner or format of reporting the local COVID-19 cases.
There is no sanity in the breakdown. We know that we — to borrow President Rodrigo Duterte’s words in describing what would happen if he reopens the economy fully amid the pandemic — are in deep shit.
We are in the seventh month of the local spread of the novel coronavirus and nearly the fifth since the first real lockdown was imposed on Metro Manila and Luzon.
The rest of the country followed with different versions of the quarantine, and yet the DoH still seems lost in its handling of the contagion.
Logged by the DoH on Sunday was the highest single-day number of deaths with 162, days after excluding the daily case update, by citing the volume of validated data and the change in the format currently adopted.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire claimed data reconciliation revealed many recoveries and deaths had been unreported.
“We are cleaning our data. We also saw a lot of deaths,” Vergeire admitted, which is proof that the agency has been giving us faulty numbers for long.
Of the total number of fatalities, only 51 were reported within July, while 90 occurred in June, 20 in May, and one in April, based on the Daily
Tribune report by Gabbie Parlade.
But the DoH will still be at it. The agency is giving us numbers we could no longer trust.
“Our data collection team will do the data reconciliation every week, so there may be days where the reported cases won’t be as high as what we’ve reported today,” Vergeire said.
It means that we would not be getting a faithful daily report on the COVID-19 cases. Just forget it. It won’t happen.
The DoH is lying to us.
We could hope the department, whose leader Secretary Francisco Duque III has not been able to lead, especially at this time of national and global emergency, would listen to its partner agencies. Or it could not save face if and when the numbers escalate further and remain unplugged.
Senator Richard Gordon, the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) chairman, is demanding a “comprehensive plan” from the government and other health stakeholders. That he finds the need to
“We
will help the country get back on its feet, but the government should fulfill its mandate to protect its people at all cost. Honesty, first and foremost.
do so going into the fifth month of the quarantine should be perplexing, if it does not affect you yet.
But he did, calling for “a grand plan on how we are going to quell COVID.” Only now, wow!
“And that’s going to be anywhere from this year to another four years. It is possible that it will never go away… even with a vaccine. It’s like flu, pneumonia,” he said.
“Even if there is already a vaccine, the virus will still exist. There should be a policy that could be implemented up to four years… the things we should do to combat it,” he added.
Gordon was echoing what we already knew. We are onto a longer haul.
Malacañang’s reaction to this call was the formation of an anti-COVID team, belated as it is but welcome nonetheless. It’s better late than none at all.
Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong is now the contact tracing czar, the Palace recognizing his success in keeping the City of Pines with the least victims of the virus.
The testing czar’s tag came late for Vince Dizon of the Bases Conversion Development Authority, and so does for Mark Villar of the Department of Public Works and Highway.
It takes more than the names or tags, though, before we could see a success in the fight against COVID-19.
We could rebrand our approach to as many iterations of the Bayanihan Act or name as many czars we can fit a very long table, but everything returns to our demand for honesty.
The government, specifically the DoH, should tell us the truth before we head out our homes.
We will help the country get back on its feet, but the government should fulfill its mandate to protect its people at all cost. Honesty, first and foremost.
“It
means that we would not be getting a faithful daily report on the COVID-19 cases. Just forget it. It won’t happen. The DoH is lying to us.