"The only way to maintain less positive cases or zero incidence is to test less or not to test at all." -- Quoted by Jonji Y. Gonzales of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas, May 10, 2020
THE SITUATION. As of May 3, Central Visayas tested 8,564 cases of suspected and confirmed Covid-19 cases, 68 percent of the samples coming from Cebu City.
Obviously, that falls way below the 3,500 test results per day, which the lead agency, Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases, wishes to be done. Vivencio Dizon told Cebu media the goal last May 9, Saturday, during a digital press-con.
"Tests, tests, tests." "More, more, more."
But apparently, many people still don't understand fully why the tests are being made, when they only raise the number of positive cases and uncover more infections in various areas of Cebu. As of Monday, May 11, 121 new cases were reported, 112 of them from Cebu City.
Getting scarier
Before the increase in the pace of tests -- speeded up by the rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) conducted by Cebu City, Mandaue City and Lapu-Lapu City and the increase of local lab capacity for testing -- people looked up to the daily reports of results as indicators of what's going on. The shooting up of the numbers expectedly is getting more scary for them.
The process must not have been explained adequately. The tests help expose the extent of infection. Where before they didn't know because there were not enough tests, now they're starting to know.
A survey conducted by a news site showed the bulk of the respondents opposes the proposed extension of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for another 15 days. "What's the point," the common thread of distrust runs, "when the lockdown doesn't show they're getting things done and won't improve things." That must refer to the piling of more cases of suspected and confirmed Covid-19. Random and limited, yet the survey is telling our leaders the problem of public disbelief.
Not new cases
One suspects that people don't understand that the tests precisely show what we don't know yet. They may not be new cases, they are infections but not indicated and confirmed until the tests exposed them.
Their metaphor about being blind may help. The tests remove or lessen the darkness of doctors and plague fighters. The illness seen after the tests is not new, it's been there, only that its presence is not confirmed.
The cases that are sending up the numbers on the board that the governor and the mayors dutifully read everyday are not new eruptions. They're just reported late.
Should the statistics make people despondent? Not surprising if they would.
Goals for the tests
But here's the good the numbers would bring:
[1] Individually, the diagnosis gives afflicted persons the knowledge they are sick and the chance to be treated; it also affords those previously infected but survive the infection and may have the immunity to go back to work.
[2] Collectively, they enable the Covid-19 fighters to take more aggressive action in places where infection is high as well as to loosen or remove restrictions in areas where it is low or nil. The data are also essential to planning and fielding resources of isolation and treatment. They are needed by top decision makers to plan gradual reopening of some parts of Cebu for business and other activities. Must Cebu shift from ECQ or lockdown to general community quarantine or GCQ? What businesses may resume, what limits on behavior may still be required?
Analysis of numbers
It may help if daily reports of numbers will come with an expert's explanation of what it means. No, not a spin but an honest-to-goodness analysis of what the turn of numbers means.
That may lessen inherent capacity of positive cases to depress and help Cebuanos go through another round of "stay at home" or "shelter in place."