Testing, testing 1, 2, 3 (Sabong News)
Author
Cito Beltran
Date
AUGUST 25 2021
On July 30, 2021, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, gave a brief statement on the global situation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. The Director General shared that “in five out of six WHO regions, COVID-19 cases have gone up by 80 percent or nearly doubled in a period of two weeks. In Africa, deaths were up by 80 percent over the same period last year, mostly driven by the Delta variant and by increased social mixing and mobility, inconsistent use of public health and social measures and inequitable vaccine use.”
“Meanwhile testing rates in low income countries are less than 2 percent than in high income countries, leaving the world blind to understanding where the disease is and how it is changing. We need stronger surveillance. We need more strategic testing to improve the global understanding of where the virus is, where public health interventions are most needed and to isolate cases and reduce transmission.”
“We need patients to receive early clinical care by trained and protected health workers, with more oxygen to treat seriously ill and save lives. We need well-trained and well-protected health workers and the systems to deliver the services and the tools to save lives. We need more research and development to ensure that tests, treatments, vaccines and other tools remain effective against the Delta variant and other emerging variants and of course we need more vaccines.”
I have taken the liberty to underscore the part of the statement that explains why countries such as the Philippines need to conduct more tests for COVID-19. It is not an issue of “Can we afford it?” As the Director General of the WHO pointed out, by not doing the needed numbers of testing, our health officials and experts will be working like blind people not knowing where the virus is and what kind of variant there is in a community. By choosing not to test 10 percent to 20 percent of certain populations, we are gambling or taking chances on where we place public health interventions. In effect, our COVID-19 response, particularly against the Delta variant, may be akin to “the blind leading the dumb.” The only light of hope at the moment is the NTF’s momentum in acquiring vaccines by the millions.
One week ago, I had the chance to interview Secretary of Labor Silvestre Bello and one of the questions I put to him was if the DOLE would ever reach a point of requiring mandatory random testing of employees, especially in work places where people are confined and create small crowds such as call centers and BPOs. Secretary Bello said that the matter would have to go through a tri-partite conference between government, employers and employee representatives. As a last word, I pushed for the idea because the burden for testing has been left to employees at their own expense.
A few hours after the interview on AGENDA, I received a message from the office of Secretary Bello informing the public that he had tested positive for COVID-19, was asymptomatic and had gone into quarantine in his hometown. I was so tempted to call the secretary if only to rub in the fact that his situation as well as what several members of the Senate, Congress and other Cabinet members have gone through is a clear and undeniable lesson or message that we need to do more COVID-19 testing, especially in offices or work places because almost all the time, the government officials who’ve been infected can’t tell how, where or from whom they got the infection, considering they claimed to have observed proper health protocols.
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After several weeks of follow-ups trying to get an appointment for a passport renewal at the Philippine embassy in the Netherlands, our daughter finally got an appointment date on JAN. 27, 2022!!!! It took almost three weeks to get an appointment and now she has to wait five months to be able to renew her passport. This is quite puzzling for our family, considering that all our visits or engagements with the Department of Foreign Affairs have been efficient, prompt and pleasant, at least all prior to COVID-19 and within NCR.
I don’t really know what’s going on but the impression that our daughter had was that the embassy was so under-staffed or over-worked that every time she spoke to someone she could only feel pity for the embassy staff in The Hague. What we don’t know is if they are operating with only a skeleton staff or if they are swamped by OFWs and seamen working on ships out of the Netherlands.
Whatever the case may be, the DFA obviously has to check on our embassies and the volume of work they do. If it takes two to three weeks to get a date and five months for the date of renewal, then the problem is not red tape. It may be serious oversight or mis-appreciation of staff requirements and technology. As President Duterte has suggested time and again, Filipinos should not have to wait for service they already paid for as taxpayers.
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In case you are one of those bored out of your mind under lockdown and busying yourself by posting or reposting videos, posts or jokes without thinking of consequences, please ask yourself if what you post or share on Facebook or Viber or IG can get you into trouble.
A friend started posting videos of what he thought were Taliban forces only to be told that the men in the video executing people were ISIS militants. I had to point out to him that he could find himself shut down by the social media service for posting material that “violates their community standards.”
I already know two guys who got locked out of their accounts just for their endless posts of sabong and golf products. What you don’t want is a call from the NBI, DICT, etc. or be locked out.
