Critics may have misunderstood govt’s plan vs. Covid-19: Palace

FILE: President Rodrigo Roa Duterte talks to the people after holding a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) core members at the Malago Clubhouse in Malacañang on July 21, 2020. ROBINSON NIÑAL JR./PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO

MANILA – Malacañang on Thursday said critics may have misunderstood the national government’s plan for the prevailing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic in the country.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque denied claims made by critics that there is a clear lack of plans to recover from the health crisis, insisting that the government has been transparent in presenting its plans.

“Ang tingin ko po, hindi lang naintindihan nung taong nagbigay ng statement niya kung ano talaga yung plano (I think they just did not understand what the plans really are),” Roque said in a press conference in Quezon City.

He said the government is enhancing its testing abilities by launching the pilot for pooled testing, which may combine samples from several people and test them together instead of running them individually.

Contact tracing efforts are now more “aggressive”, more isolation centers are being established, and more life-saving equipment used for Covid-19 patients, such as units of high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) machines and medicines are being procured, Roque added.

In the same briefing, the chief implementer of the country’s National Policy Against Covid-19, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., said the Covid-19 recovery plan comes in three phases.

Galvez said phase 1 was implemented from March to June, phase 2 from July to September, and phase 3 from October to December.

Currently, he said, the task force is prioritizing the protection of front-liners by providing them with free Covid-19 testing.

Galvez, however, acknowledged criticisms, saying these would all be reviewed by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).

Meanwhile, Roque welcomed the report that the country’s basic reproduction number or r0 (read as r-naught) has lowered to 1.3 from 1.7, according to Prof. Ranjit Rye from the University of the Philippines Department of Political Science.

The r0 helps predict the expected number of cases from exposure to a single case, assuming all the individuals in the given population are susceptible.

“Ibig sabihin nito, kung anuman ang ginagawa ng gobyerno, bagama’t tumataas ang numero, e nag-improve naman po yung r0 na ibig sabihin mas kakaunti na ang nahahawa ng mga nagkakasakit (This means that whatever the government is doing, even if cases are increasing, the r0 is improving which means fewer people are getting infected),” he said.

As of Wednesday, the country has 85,486 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 26,996 recoveries and 1,962 deaths.

Of this number, 5,083 were asymptomatic, 50,923 were mild cases, 227 were critical cases, and 295 were severe cases.