THE last four days saw a spike in Covid-19 cases in Cebu City as the City Government ramped up testing for the virus especially in areas with confirmed Covid-19 infections. Many of those who tested positive were asymptomatic.
This is worrisome. It means that a person who you trust will not give you the disease because he is not running a fever or has no cough or cold is actually a carrier. More worrisome is the fact that these “silent carriers” may constitute a majority of the infected population: 60 percent, according to recent studies cited by a World Economic Forum article.
The same article also quoted former United States Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who warned on Twitter early last month that the “spread of Covid-19 by people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic may be responsible for more transmission than previously thought, making control of the virus more difficult.”
The best approach to this threat is to test everyone but that is impossible, given our population and the scarcity of our resources and the kits themselves. Even powerful countries like the United States are experiencing the same problem. The New York Times reported yesterday that Senate Democrats have proposed a $30 billion plan to address the problem by setting up fast, free testing in every community.
We don’t have that much money for a similar program to flush out the carriers, including the silent ones and then isolate them. I spoke to Mayor Edgar Labella and while he said that he’d vigorously pursue his testing program, I knew that he could not possibly do this on all of the city’s more than a million residents within a time frame necessary. That is why our movements have to be restricted and we have to observe physical distancing.
These restrictions are not making our lives any easier. But fighting this dreaded disease is a shared burden. We have to make our own sacrifices. Actually, and I will not stop repeating this, ours is very little compared with those of the others. Here, I refer not only to the doctors, nurses and other health workers at the frontlines but also to government officials with the exception of those who have suddenly vanished as soon as the threat of the virus spreading to Cebu became real.
Let’s show our solidarity with Gov. Gwen Garcia, Labella and all our other mayors by observing the quarantine instead of grumbling against it. I do not blame the governor for losing her temper every now and then because people continue to behave like it is business as usual. Under the same circumstances, a more temperamental one would probably have had the hard-headed ones really drowned instead of being just threatened with drowning.
I saw Labella on SunStar’s live coverage of his presscon yesterday and noticed how he has lost weight. Running a city of one million geniuses can be draining to both body and spirit.
Come on, people. Stay at home even if you have an ECQ pass unless it is extremely necessary for you to go out. Wear a mask. And practice social distancing. Always remember that the person you’re talking to could be a silent coronavirus carrier.