IT LOOKS like we’re winning the war against the novel coronavirus. The number of confirmed cases in the country remains at three and all of them were visiting Chinese nationals. And while there are a number of Filipinos who have tested positive for the deadly virus, all of them got the infection abroad.
Besides, the numbers released by the Department of Health in their daily tracking of the disease have steadily been on the decline. From a high of 230 admitted persons under investigation (PUIs) on Feb. 13, 2020, the number has dwindled to only 137 as of Tuesday. None of them have been confirmed as afflicted by the virus.
In Central Visayas, the number of PUIs who are currently admitted stood at two also on Tuesday, a dramatic decline from the 35 recorded on Feb. 13.
And yet, notwithstanding these numbers, why do people still easily fall for fake news about the supposed hospitalization and subsequent deaths of coronavirus patients?
Why did so many Facebook users share the post of an optometrist from Lahug that a foreign national died while being confined for the novel coronavirus in a hospital in Mandaue?
Why did the lie spread by a former Talisay city employee that many people have been admitted to the City’s hospital because of coronavirus and some of them already died become viral?
Is it because the government’s information team has failed to ply the public with information that is easier to understand? I visited the DOH website for updates on the virus yesterday, and it took me more than hour to gain access to and understand the data.
Public information officers need no reminder that fake news thrives in the absence of credible and easy to understand information.
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What’s in a name? Plenty if you are a virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the name should not include a location, animal or group of people in order to avoid any stigma.
Thus, the WHO has christened the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China as COVID-19, instead of Chinese Covid or Wuhan Covid-19. It is perhaps for the same reason—not to stigmatize any place, animal or group of people—that the disease that originated in Guangdong Province, also in China in November 2002 was and continues to be referred to simply as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or Sars, not the China or Guangdong Sars. Fair enough.
Or is it? The coronavirus that was discovered 10 years after Sars and seven years before Covid-19 was named by world health officials as the Merscov or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus obviously in reference to the fact that it was first detected in Saudi Arabia in September 2012. Does the name not stigmatize the Middle East?
What about the African Swine Fever? The Bird or Avian Flu? The pig is an animal. Africa is a location. Why is stigmatizing not an issue here? And by the way, the bird flu, although an old ailment, reappeared in China in 1996, 2003 and just recently.
I am for not making any reference to any country, people or animal, in naming a disease or virus. Covid-19 is a neutral name. But by the same token, shouldn’t we delete Middle East from Merscov, Africa from the swine fever and bird from the flu?