As the Omicron variant zooms around the country snacking on delicious Filipino bodies, the same chokeholds we experienced during the early days of the pandemic once again grip our feverish throats.
For starters, we have COVID-testing, which is turning out to be largely unavailable because of the huge numbers of wannabe-testeds showing up. The sheer volume led to hospitals and test sites turning away paying clients because of lack of capacity.
The cautionary tale I can offer would be a friend who had lined up at St. Luke’s hospital in Taguig City at 3 a.m. to get a testing slot. Two days prior, he had made the unfortunate decision to show at 8 a.m. at the same hospital, only to be told there were no more slots available for the day.
So much for dragging himself out of bed, still nursing symptoms indicative of COVID-19, and lining up with both infected and uninfected to get tested. He had to recover a bit from that experience (and yes, his symptoms), and yet again crawl to BGC at an ungodly hour two days after, to finally get swabbed.
This was the experience of someone who has cash to get the gold standard of tests, the RT-PCR. But what about our other brethren who are feeling ill, but can’t afford an expensive test like that? From the accounts of my friend, who had also explored alternative ways to get tested, it’s been a total nightmare just to locate test sites. He had tried to sign up at the free testing sites by his LGU as well as the Red Cross, but those are all booked until kingdom come.
So what does a poor, cash-strapped, Filipino do to get tested? Hopefully without infecting more people? Shouldn’t these tests be free? Shouldn’t these tests be accessible? Shouldn’t they be readily available? As in, on demand? Like, now?
Undoubtedly, this government should have the ability to respond to surges in demand such as this. But expectedly, our incompetent health authorities failed to take advantage of the lessons earlier afforded them by experience, and the lull offered by the last quarter of 2021 when case numbers were more manageable, to anticipate the worst. They didn’t. Now, they are caught, yet again with pants down, totally unprepared for this intense clamor for tests.
How infuriating. That only tells us that the numbers we are seeing, reported by the Department of Health every day (and usually accompanied by notate bene that not all the accredited testing sites reported their results) are incredibly unrepresentative of the real health picture of the country.
There are multitudes getting turned away from testing sites. Therefore, the alarmingly high numbers we are seeing as positive for the day don’t even include all those who were indeed carrying the virus but couldn’t get tested.
So don’t believe there are only 37,000 or whatever new COVID sufferers for the day. Factor in those who showed up but couldn’t take the test. And those who couldn’t show up because they can’t afford it. And those too ill to show up. And those too afraid to show up. And of course, those who don’t care to show up, because their family member has COVID and everyone else got sick at the same time --so they already know it’s COVID without being tested.
Add all of the above into one big group, and what do we have? A real epidemic. An epidemic whose actual infectivity rate is way beyond the capacity of this government to measure.
I guess we should stop expecting so much from this government. As stated so eloquently in a favorite movie “Dangerous Liaisons”, and which I will deploy in this totally unrelated context, “to hope to be made happy by love (from this administration) is a certain cause of grief”.
And grief, we do have here.