After 60 days of lockdown, where are we now? For sure, we are nowhere near being set free. And it seems we have wasted two months because we had a health secretary who did not understand the importance of mass testing.
Rep. Joey Salceda had the patience to crunch the numbers and study experiences in other countries. In a very informative paper, he shared his conclusions on where we went wrong:
“Our analysis of comparative data shows that success stories among countries used their lockdown periods to expand testing and tracing, as in Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand and South Korea, and adopt an approach that exhausts contacts and turns around test results quickly, such that those who are tested are contact-traced, their contacts are tested and traced, ad infinitum, are able to successfully bring down cases to manageable levels.”
An early advocate of the tough lockdown for NCR, Joey sounds sorry it didn’t work as he envisioned.
“ECQ was necessary, but not sufficient. ECQ was a policy designed to help us meet minimum health standards and set up a system of testing and tracing. It was a necessary input to our COVID-19 policy toolkit, and a necessary first stage to a long-haul fight against COVID-19…”
Joey thinks it could have worked for us too, except that we failed to mass test.
“For Asian countries where the test-trace-test-trace systematic approach worked, testing results turnaround time appears to be within 48 hours… The use of digital technology to contact tracing is most appropriate, but would be challenged by weak telecom systems and worse by a DOH bureaucracy that’s pretty successful in undermining the acquisition of PPEs and test kits.”
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez agrees. In his latest report to the President, he said: “We should hire contact tracers en masse to boost our efforts to defeat the virus, and provide jobs. We have lost 1.2 to 1.5 million jobs. This can temporarily replace them.”
There are other problems that made us fight the virus blindly… the most basic is absence of reliable data.
The UP COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team, in a Facebook post, emphasized that “the availability of accurate, relevant, and timely data is a basic requirement in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Decisions depend on data, and any analysis is only as good as the data at hand…”
The UP scientists pointed out “alarming errors” and “inconsistencies” in the data provided by the Department of Health. They cited important unaddressed issues:
• Continuing mismatch between DOH and LGU numbers.
• Alarming errors in patient-level data.
The UP scientists who had been working with DOH also made the following observations:
• Science cannot exist in a vacuum. Any scientific output benefits from cross-validation from peers, which can only happen in an environment where government data is made available to all relevant stakeholders.
• Entrusting government data to select private entities only is inimical to public interest.
• Making all data sources open, while also being mindful of the same data privacy protocols that DOH is following, can further empower stakeholders in our collective fight against COVID-19.
• Data must be used to generate knowledge. Keeping information in silos limits our understanding of the problem, thus limiting our chances to maintain and preserve public health and security.
• Data issues must be resolved as soon as possible to secure public trust in the plans, decisions, and pronouncements of the government and its private partners.
The UP COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team is composed of around 200 professors, researchers, alumni and students from various fields such as epidemiology, emergency medicine, public health, and computer science.
Specific examples of data problems with DOH were cited by the UP scientists:
“For instance, a patient reported by the DOH as dead on April 24 was no longer among the fatalities listed the next day.
“Comparing data releases from these two days alone, the UP experts said at least 45 of the coronavirus cases went from male to female or vice versa, 75 patients became younger or older overnight, while 516 cases were reclassified ‘either to another city or a completely imaginary city.’
The team added that there continues to be a mismatch between the numbers disclosed by the DOH and that of local government units. It cited as an example that on May 3, the DOH reported seven deaths and 28 recoveries in Laguna – short by 22 deaths and 65 recoveries from what was recorded by the provincial government.
The DOH had a similar issue when the Cebu City Jail first reported infections among inmates, something that was not reflected on case bulletins released by the agency daily. The DOH explained that its daily reports, including the number of new cases, are not real-time data since all information has to be validated before reporting.
Sec Duque’s claim the number errors are not significant is not credible, given his and DOH’s track record in managing this epidemic.
This is why I suggested to a senior Cabinet member to let the statisticians of the Philippine Statistics Authority handle COVID data. Not only do they know what to do, they represent an independent, uninterested view that will make the numbers credible.
Actually, it is a good idea to assign data handling for future epidemics to PSA. The DOH will always be suspected of using data to cover up for failure to prepare for the epidemic as well as for mishandling the epidemic response.
Were the last two months a waste?
Yes and No. It must have helped reduce number of patients with the reduction in contacts. But, yes, a waste because our officials didn’t use the time productively to test, isolate and treat. Isolation facilities remain largely unused.
Nikkei Asian Review observed that “Duterte’s lockdown is the strictest in the region…
“The effective way to contain the spread of the new coronavirus are not repressive measures, but reliable health and medical interventions, including testing.”
We are nowhere near controlling the virus, but we are paying a big price for the failure of our health officials to handle the epidemic the way the Taiwanese, Vietnamese and South Koreans did.
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Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco
