"Here’s Vince Dizon on the government’s efforts to contain the virus."
"Here’s Vince Dizon on the government’s efforts to contain the virus."
Finally, the Duterte administration has launched its so-called T3 program—Test, Trace, and Treat.
As I have been advocating in this column, there are four Ts to combat the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19 (coronavirus infectious disease 2019)—testing, tracing of contacts, treatment, and trust.
If you do well on the first three Ts, you gain the people’s trust. If you gain the people’s trust, the people will cooperate in combating COVID-19, which basically involves 1) complying with the rigid environment of Enhanced Community Quarantine or lockdown which requires staying at home and social distancing; 2) washing hands frequently; and 3) wearing masks when in the presence of other people and in public.
The Department of Health under Secretary Francisco Duque was slow or failed to conduct the three Ts – test, contact tracing, and treatment. That is why the DoH could not have the trust of the people. Having failed on the four Ts, the DoH just kept on taking the path of least resistance, ECQ. But ECQ has killed the economy, rendered 25 million jobless, made half of the people poor, and triggered mass hunger, malnutrition, and police abuses against so-called ECQ violators.
The other day, President Duterte removed from Duque the responsibility for the three Ts. The job goes to Vince Dizon, the technocrat turned master executioner of government infra projects. Dizon is deputy Chief Implementer, National Task Force COVID-19, president of BCDA Corp., and the presidential assistant for Special Flagship Projects – the more than 100 Build, Build, Build projects.
Excerpts from Vince’s briefing on the T3 program yesterday; translated into English:
I am here to present the program on T3– Test, Trace and Treat. This is the program in tandem with the private sector to fight COVID-19.
To emphasize the importance of testing to combat COVID-19, let me quote from the World Health Organization (WHO): “You cannot fight a fire blindfolded and we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected. We have a simple message for all countries: The message is to test, test, and test.”
Our enemy is the disease called COVID-19. The problem is that this disease is invisible inside our countrymen. That is why we need to test to determine who among us is stricken with the disease.
If we ramp up testing, we will save many lives, especially our poor countrymen who have no means to isolate themselves. So we need to test them, isolate them, and treat them.
This morning, we inspected the test centers we are building to ramp up swabbing. We will bring our countrymen to these test centers for swabbing, starting with our OFWs so that each of them can tested in a safe place. Safe both for them and our patients as well as safe for our frontliners.
The test booths are very secure and very safe, so our frontliners will not be infected in case some of those tested have the COVID-19 virus.
In the coming days, we will ramp up laboratory testing. We told the President last night (May 4) we have 20 laboratories. We will have additional 56 to bring our target number of laboratories by May 30, to 78, nationwide, including Visayas and Mindanao.
The most number of infections are on Luzon island, especially Metro Manila. So the most number of our laboratories are in Metro Manila. But we will scale up our laboratories nationwide, including the Visayas and Mindanao.Ӭ
It is important that we do massive testing in the coming days, weeks and months. There will be no letup. Today, we can do an average of 5,000 tests per day. With 78 laboratories, we can scale up to 30,000 tests per day. This will put us on the same level of countries that invested in mass testing, like South Korea, Singapore, and Israel. We are convinced we will have the 30,000 test capacity by May 30.
We will do massive testing with the help of the private sector. Firstly, the largest laboratory today in the Philippines is that of the Philippine National Red Cross headed by Sen. Richard Gordon. We are grateful to Senator Gordon and the great men and women of the Red Cross. They contributed immensely to our testing capacity.
We will not stop with the Red Cross. We will put up testing facilities in Metro Manila, Central Luzon, Southern Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
Aside from the Red Cross, private companies are helping us, like Unilab, Ayala, San Miguel, Saint Luke’s, Makati Medical, and the hospitals of the Metro Pacific Group of Companies,
We are united under what we call the T3 Coalition, in partnership with the DoH, the entire government, to ramp up our testing capacity.
Our immediate goal is swab test the 25,000 OFWs and other overseas Filipinos, in Metro Manila, including our seafarers and returning Filipinos.
For our swabbing facilities, we thank the Manila Bulletin Group, SM for the use of the MOA Arena, the Udenna Group for the use of the Enderun facilities, and of course, the Razon Group and the Ayala Group of companies for their help and donations in constructing the testing facilities and swabbing centers.
