Pandemic plan needs more imagination

WE would like to make it clear at the outset that we are not endorsing any sort of “devil may care” approach to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, or that it is anything less than a catastrophic public health crisis that requires the full attention of the government and the people. Instead, we are hoping that by approaching the question from a direction that may seem to some people to be radical and perhaps even inappropriate, we can encourage a more positive discussion of what the country should do moving forward.

The news from Monday was anything but encouraging. Just a day after Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, the head of the National Task Force Covid-19 opined that Metro Manila was “ready to go back” to the more relaxed general community quarantine because the numbers of new positive cases of the Covid-19 infection “are going down,” the Department of Health (DoH) logged a record daily increase of 6,958 new cases. Alarmingly, this number, which exceeded the old daily record by about 600 cases, came from the reports of just 74 of the 99 registered testing labs in the country, according to the DoH. That means that the true numbers of new cases were likely at least several hundred more than what was reported by the official statistics.