THE country is free of the new coronavirus with no confirmed case yet but it is entering an information crisis where the public is getting incomplete data about this health scare.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, the public should not spread misinformation on the new coronavirus. “It’s not yet here. I call upon everyone not to be an instrument of propagation of misinformation, which we call an ‘infodemic’ that will do no good except create anxiety and fear in our people,” he said in a television interview.
He said this after he learned that six schools in Manila suspended classes Monday because of false information on social media about a confirmed case. Duque said there is no confirmed case of the novel or new coronavirus called the 2019-nCoV in the country but the Department of Health (DOH) is monitoring 11 foreign nationals suspected of having the new illness.
Duque does not give a definition of “infodemic” in his interview but the Oxford online dictionary says the noun refers to “a surfeit of information about a problem that is viewed as being a detriment to its solution.” The Health secretary probably meant that the spread of misinformation about the virus is making it difficult for the DOH to manage the situation.
But what needs managing is also the information released by the DOH itself which, as a past incident showed, should heed its own warning.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO), the specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health, had to clarify reports when it said that, despite the finding that a five-year-old boy confined in a Cebu hospital was positive for coronavirus, there was no confirmation that it was the 2019-nCoV. Three days later, results of the confirmatory test indeed showed the boy to be negative of the 2019-nCoV.
As it turned out, there are seven known strains of the human coronaviruses. They are the human coronavirus 229E, human coronavirus OC43, Sars-CoV, human coronavirus NL63, human coronavirus HKU1, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (Mers-CoV), and the latest—the Wuhan coronavirus or the 2019-nCoV.
The new illness has been blamed for at least 80 deaths and 2,744 infection cases as of noon Monday.
The first report on the boy did not emphasize the different coronavirus strains. The information released to the media lacked context on the testing procedure and the possible explanations. It could be the newness of the virus and unfamiliarity with the illness, but it is clear that correct and complete information is required to fight what Duque called as the “infodemic.” It causes anxiety when the public is not assured of adequate, verified, correct information about this health scare.
The Chinese government is cracking down on the release of information on social media and is managing what the world has to know about what is happening inside its country. That should worry Duque too.