Editorial: Salvana, Loreche, Garcia, and yes, the data

Editorial Art by Enrico Santisas
Editorial Art by Enrico Santisas

A recent newspaper column called “Clinical Matters” of Dr. Edsel Salvana, a molecular epidemiologist from the University of the Philippines and a member of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of the Department of Health (DOH), had caused quite a stir among Cebu officials. The column traced the “origins and inside story (as much as I can reveal) of the current decision to do a preemptive ECQ.”

Much of the beef of those slighted by the good doctor’s column specifically comes from this statement: “Some IATF-EID and TAG members, including myself, went to Cebu at the end of June and presented the threat of Delta to the Cebu Provincial Board. We warned that if Delta got into Cebu due to lax border control, a bad surge was forthcoming. Delta is now in Cebu causing a large spike in cases, overwhelming their health care system. Some of the Delta outbreaks in Mindanao have been linked through whole genome analysis to returning Filipinos who entered through hthe Cebu airport. While it might have been impossible to competely stop Delta from coming in, it could have been slowed down.”

To recall, the governor invited the IATF team following the heated tug-of-war over which entry protocol for inbound Filipinos at the airport must be followed—Cebu’s, via the governor’s Executive Order (EO) 17, or the IATF’s through Resolution 114, which was primarily a response to the threat of the Delta variant. The latter required the quarantining of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) for 10 days in an isolation facility and four more days under close monitoring in their point of destination. It required swabbing only on the seventh day, based on the science that any tests done earlier than that could only yield false negatives. The IATF did not protest EO 17’s swab-upon-arrival measure, provided that the seventh-day swab would still be performed. The basic difference in the protocols was in the number of quarantine days required of OFWs and ROFs—EO 17 only required three days following a negative swab result. In the end, though, the IATF measure prevailed and the governor, in an announcement via social media livestream, set aside the EO “in deference to the President.”

Reacting to Salvana’s recent column, the governor said, “So how dare you blame Cebu, you better back up your statement with clear data because we have our own data to refute you... Next time, Dr. Salvana, be mindful of your statement. You consider yourself an expert? Well, you’ve been around, haven’t you? For over a year and have you been able to come out with a clear road map on how to deal with Covid-19? All that you seem to recommend is dance the Sinulog, two steps forward, one step backward, but worse with you, it’s one step forward five steps backward for the economy, for livelihood of people, for this country in fact. So watch what you say.”

On the other hand, Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, of the DOH 7, also has this to say in response to Salvana’s column. She said Cebu’s recent case surge could be “multi-factorial in nature,” and cited human behavior via Covid fatigue and complacency among those vaccinated. She acknowledges though the difference in border control policies but said “these were correspondingly addressed.”

There is something to be said about the three statements. For one, it is Salvana’s column that is rather forthright in its claim, citing very specifically that Mindanao’s Delta outbreak was linked “through whole genome analysis to returning Filipinos who entered through the Cebu airport.” Should we take the governor’s challenge to Salvana, records of the early Delta cases in Mindanao can be easily culled via the concerned agencies. If data is what we want, then data we must forage, for the public to have at least a better judgment on who in this word war and probably bluff game are really speaking the truth. If only as a call for accountability in this crisis, which the virus unfortunately did not single-handedly cause. A big part of where we are today are caused either by human miscalculation, which is forgivable, and outright madness, which is utterly criminal.

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