AN “interagency miscommunications” is now being blamed for the delays in the crucial contract tracing of passengers of the flight taken by the two foreigners who were confirmed to be infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) after arriving in the country.
During a Senate hearing on Tuesday, it was revealed that the Department of Health (DOH) was only able to contact 17 percent of the 331 passengers of the concerned flight, 14 days after it arrived in the country on Jan. 21.
Grilled by several senators, Health Secretary Franciso Duque III attributed the slow pace of the Bureau of Epidemiology to the alleged refusal of the concerned airline to share with them the contact details of the passengers due to the Data Privacy Law.
“The airlines are not sharing . . . The contact details of the passengers. They are invoking confidentiality,” Duque said – a comment that drew a quick reaction from one of the three carriers with regular flights to China and its Special Administrative Regions Macau and Hong Kong.
“CEB has been in close coordination with the Department of Health, the Bureau of Quarantine and other government agencies to help manage the risk of contamination from the nCoV and has been working with the government from the beginning,” said Cebu Pacific in a statement on Tuesday.
“Per the request of both the DOH and BOQ, CEB has already provided a list of the passengers aboard both flights. There is no impediment whatsoever for CEB to provide any and all information that the BOH and DOQ would need from us for their purposes,” Cebu Pacific added.
“We have also contacted the passengers aboard the flights taken by NCOV-positive patients and updated them [DOH] on those we have been able to speak with. As an additional measure, Cebu Pacific opened a hotline to enable passengers aboard the specific flights to call the airline.”
The DOH’s failure to give the carriers timely, even confidential notification that certain of their passengers were under investigation had earlier been slammed by some aviation sources, who noted that DOH held on to that information for over 10 days while awaiting confirmatory tests on the Chinese passengers – precious time which the airlines could have used, had they been told earlier, for some contact tracing or preemptive or mitigation measures. The carriers only learned of the investigation from the media reports, when DOH broke the news of the first confirmed case, a Chinese woman who traveled from Wuhan.
Cebu Pacific pulled out the plane used by the nCoV patient and placed the concerned cabin crew on 14-day quarantine.
DOH conducts the contact tracing to determine if any of people, who had close contact with two 2019-nCoV infected foreigners, were also infected by the disease.
Use BI paper trail – Locsin
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said the pace of the contact tracing would have gone faster had the Bureau of Immigration (BI) shared the contact details with DOH.
“What I now, not just as secretary of foreign affairs but as any airline passenger, is you cannot get out of the plane unless you give the details where you are living, what is your address. I have been reprimanded in airports for failing to give the address of the hotels. Therefore that slip of paper is in the custody of the Bureau of Immigration, therefore there is no such thing as right to privacy, otherwise we are open to foreign invasion,” Locsin said.
To resolve the issue, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade urged DOH to coordinate with BI and the airport agencies, which have the power to compel airlines to submit the contact details.
“What we have here is a glaring example of failure to communicate…What should be the template for the process? You know, if it is the Department of Health that would be the one to follow up with the airlines and the Department of Health has no power and ascendancy to enforce suspension or compliance, they will not follow,” Tugade said.
“The protocol should be, once there is contact tracing, CAAP and CAB should take it upon themselves to commence the contact tracing because they have the power and ascendancy,” he added.
Duque took note of the recommendations and vowed to implement a 48-hour contact tracing policy.
Senator Francis Pangilinan, however, said the slow pace of the contact pacing is not just a failure of communication but also a failure of the leadership on the part of Duque.
Officials’ assurances
Senator Christopher Go, presiding over the Health committee hearing on the nCoV, sought assurances from concerned officials and health experts that the virus will be contained.
Voicing hopes the coronavirus “will not spread further throughout the country,” Go asserted, “We are here to enligthen the public about the (coronavirus) issue.”
Key government officials outlined the precautionary measures already in place to protect Filipinos from the spread of the virus that began in Wuhan, China.
According to Go, the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in the Philippines, Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe, had lauded the government for its efforts and response to the disease.
Health Secretary Duque III noted that the fatality rate of the 2019-nCoV is “much less than SARS and MERS-CoV but it is more easily transmissible.”
Virus survives 10 hours
Duque likewise clarified the mode of transmission of the disease, saying, “Our available information says that coronavirus can survive and stay for as long as 10 hours on inanimate objects like keyboards, tables, and fomites,” referring to clothing or bedding that can absorb and transmit the infecting organism of a disease.
In the same hearing, the DOH also confirmed that President Duterte has approved the budget needed for the procurement of personnel protective equipment for around 5,000 workers who will need them amid the threats of the 2019-nCoV.
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea also provided senators with updates on President Duterte’s directives.
Besides the travel ban covering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, Medialdea said Duterte had also “ordered the establishment of repatriation and quarantine facility for novel coronavirus,” even as the establishment of quarantine facilities is still being studied.
With Butch Fernandez
Image credits: Roy Domingo