During a televised Inter-Agency Task Force meeting, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III claimed that the country was not capable of testing the entire population for COVID-19.
Duque made the statement after President Rodrigo Duterte asked if the country has the capacity to conduct testing for every citizen. He further mentioned that even developed countries like the United States of America have not tested each individual therefore there is no such thing as one-is-to-one testing worldwide.
Meanwhile, reports showed that countries across Asia such as Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have successfully mobilized the spread of the virus through mass-testing combining it with technology and social distancing.
Duque’s words displeased many Filipinos for not only did he misinterpret “mass testing” again, but he also misled the public on the current status of the country with COVID-19.
“As the public continues to call for mass testing, Health Sec. Francisco Duque III claimed that no country has successfully mass tested its entire population for #COVID19,” the ABS-CBN news division tweeted.
However, “Mass Testing” which has already been clarified months ago does not equate to testing the entire population but rather means testing the critical mass as what Senator Sonny Angara stated, “Mass testing means critical mass not entire or absolute mass.”
Mass testing means critical mass not entire or absolute mass. I thought we settled this months ago
— Sonny Angara (@sonnyangara) July 21, 2020
Some criticized the statement of Duque because he seemed to mock the capability of the public to understand, that instead of giving a clear update on the situation he confuses many with his definition of the terms.
Disappointed by this they even urged him to do the country a favor and just resign.
https://twitter.com/richardjuan/status/1285392129745805313
Mass Testing doesn’t mean testing the entire population. Paulit ulit tayo dito? Tangina kaya ang daming nagiging tanga kasi may namumunong tangang public official na kagaya mo. Do your country a favor, PLEASE RESIGN https://t.co/2zfdYBhaKu
— Kerwin King (@imkerwinking) July 21, 2020
Others tried to make a comparison between “mass testing” and other concepts like mass wedding and mass burial to point out the flaw in Duque’s reasoning.
So kapag Mass Burial ililibing rin ba tayo lahat? WAAAAA https://t.co/oqDB0gcErR
— DJ Chacha (@_djchacha) July 21, 2020
https://twitter.com/TheRainBro/status/1285392021981499392
Duque in his statement added that they are planning to increase testing up to 40,000 Filipinos each day from the current 25,000 tested for COVID-19 a day.
“Na-reach na po ‘yung 25,000. Ang target po natin is 10 million Filipinos to be tested by 2021. And we hope to be able to do the test at 32,000 to about 40,000 a day, Mr. President. So hindi naman po natin puwedeng i-test ang bawat mamamayan,” he said.
The Department of Health also reported that it has already tested 1,087,935 individuals as of July 19.
It can be recalled that Pres. Spokesperson Harry Roque also misinterpreted the term “mass testing” when he said that the government has no program yet to conduct mass testing but instead they will carry out “expanded targeted testing”, adding that it is wrong to use the term “mass testing” as no country can conduct testing of all its citizens.
“Wala pong bansa sa buong mundo na tinetest ang lahat ng kanilang mamamayan. Kaya nga po mali ang terminong mass testing.”
The University of the Philippines (UP) experts have previously pointed that mass testing is much needed since the country is on a 38% delay in testing while other countries have already tested up to 50% of their population.
