The enemy is Covid-19, not UP researchers

Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. briefly made himself a social media star, and not in a good way, on Tuesday by proclaiming a “victory” of sorts over University of the Philippines ( UP) researchers who had earlier predicted the country would register 40,000 cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 ( covid- 19) by the end of June.

In a televised press conference on Tuesday, June 30, Roque cheerfully explained, “We did not hit 40,000 or we will not hit 40,000 by end of June, which is only a few days which is what two days? One day? Today is the last day na pala! ano bang sinasabi ko. Wala na po, panalo na tayo” ( What am I saying. It’s over. We won).

“We beat the UP prediction. We beat it! So, congratulations, Philippines! let’s do it again in July,” he added.

Roque also stressed that the country had seen a drop in the covid- 19 fatality rate, a slowdown in the case doubling rate and a decrease in the test positivity rate. The country’s testing backlog is now down to 1,000, not the 10,000- test results being reported, he added.

Netizens quickly took Roque to task, often in humorous ways, for turning the daily announcement of covid- 19 testing and case statistics into a competition between the government and UP researchers. and they were quick to point out that most of his claims of “winning” were, according to the Department of Health’s ( DoH) own data, completely erroneous.

Since the beginning of the covid- 19 pandemic, a number of enterprising individuals and groups have been compiling statistics online from the DoH’s 4 p. m. daily data drop. One of the better websites engaged in this useful public service is called “which provides a clear picture of the country’s situation as of two or three days ago ( it evidently takes some time to process the data). Our own checking of the website’s information against the “data drop” statistics shows it to be completely accurate.

Based on the DoH- sourced data, the UP prediction model was, if anything, somewhat optimistic, because contrary to the enthusiastic claim of Mr. Roque, the 40,000- case threshold was actually reached on June 23, when the cumulative number of positive covid- 19 tests totaled 40,084. The total number of “confirmed” tests, those validated by the DoH, was reported as 31,825 on that day, a test results backlog of 8,259. By June 28, the number of positive test results, validated test results and backlog, or difference between the two, had grown to 46,335, 35,455 and 10,880, respectively.

Granted a certain number of unvalidated positive test results would likely be proven false when reviewed, but it is highly unlikely that number is anywhere near the 10,000plus results — more than 23 percent of the total — yet to be processed.

The claims of a slowdown in the fatality rate, case doubling rate and test positivity rate are also spurious. The fatality rate, while lower than the global average, seems to have remained fairly steady for the past two months, as has the case doubling rate. The test positivity rate now is lower than it was at a high point in mid- april but has been fairly constant since then, and has even ticked upward in the past several days.

We would certainly agree that it is important to highlight any progress against covid-19 in order to reassure the nation and to encourage people to continue to cooperate with anti-pandemic measures. Presumably, that was what Roque was trying to do, particularly on a day when most other news about the covid-19 crisis was alarming. If that is the case, the intentions were good, but the execution was poor. Misrepresenting information that can be easily checked by anyone in the audience is worse than saying nothing at all. Making that misrepresentation an implied criticism of scientists at the premier state university of the country creates unnecessary divisions among people and organizations that ought to be working in concert toward the single goal of eradicating this disease.

We hope that Mr. Roque, and anyone else in the government who is tasked with providing public information, learns from this regrettable episode, and will henceforth make a greater effort to be clear and accurate in their messages.