On Mass Testing
Our little project – The Resilience Boodle Bar Telegram Poll Group (a by invitation Telegram Poll Group) has yielded some very interesting results and we are sharing them with you in the hope that they can also get you started thinking and talking. Maybe our insights can lead to concrete actions and solutions.
For our very first poll, we asked our members which aspect of solving the COVID-19 crisis ought to be our top priority.
32% of our respondents feel that implementing mass testing should be our top priority followed closely by aligning private and public efforts at 30%. The third is the stricter implementation of quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus.
We then asked our members two follow up questions to try and contextualize the results of the first question — how much they know about the test and what they think is keeping us from doing mass testing.
It turns out that an overwhelming majority of our respondents (60%) have some basic understanding of the process that goes into the COVID-19 test and that only 7% actually know a lot about it.
As for the reason why we have not gone into this, close to half (44%) of our respondents say it is because we have limited laboratories and manpower to process and facilitate the tests.
Now let’s compare this sentiment with some of the information we have online about the Department of Health’s position.
In a press conference last March 20, DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explained that South Korea has capitalized on mass testing because the country has a well capable health system and that they have the capacity for it.
Just a couple of days ago, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles announced that the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) will be targeting 20,000 tests per day by April 27. And they intend to do this by maximizing existing sub-national laboratories, certifying more sub-national laboratories, and establishing big testing centers in key areas around the country.
So what do the recent developments tell us about the insights from our polls?
The government is indeed ramping up its efforts to conduct more tests which seem to indicate that our leaders feel that mass testing is a top priority.
While only a handful of our respondents are knowledgeable about the test (which may be the case for the rest of the Philippine population), the majority of our poll respondents recognize the clear limitation of our healthcare system for such a complicated scientific procedure.
Send us a message via our Facebook Page if you too want to become a member of our Resilience Boodle Bar Telegram Poll Group and share your valuable insights into the world.
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Featured Image:
SWAB BOOTH. Dr. Mary Kathleen Bartolome-Juangco (inside the booth), Quezon City General Hospital (QCGH) ENT chief, demonstrates some of the basic functions of the COVID-19 swab booth at the Quezon City General Hospital compound on Wednesday (April 8, 2020). A swab booth is used to take specimen to lessen the exposure of healthcare workers to droplets from people infected with the virus. It will also reduce the need for personal protective equipment. (PNA photo by Robert Oswald P. Alfiler)