August 22 ,2020
The PPP/C is “hard ears’. When it comes to national emergencies, they wait until the “boat done gone a falls” before they act.
In other words, the PPP/C does not like to listen to the view of others especially when these views do not accord with or is critical of the government’s stance on an issue. It is only until someone close to the leadership of the party is affected directly that the party is plunged into action.
The PPP/C’s management of the COVID-19 situation is nothing short of a calamity. In other parts of the world, and notwithstanding the newness of the government, there would have been calls for the Minister of Health to immediately step aside.
It may not be too late for him to do so. The carpet seems to have been pulled from beneath him in the management of this pandemic. It seems as if instead of being treated as health emergency, this pandemic is now being approached as a financial emergency.
The Minister of Health seems to have gotten his priorities mixed-up. Instead of addressing fake rumours of contaminated results – rumours which originated from an opposition rabble-rouser – the Minister of Health should be addressing that which is not fake: the spike in positive cases and deaths.
More than 218 cases have been recorded over the five-day period August 15-20. Yesterday, there were 35 additional cases, bringing the total over six days to 253. The first COVID-19 case was recorded on March 12, 2020. It took another 112 days for the caseload to reach 250 cases. It has taken the PPP/C only six days.
One of the explanations for this steep rise in cases has been that more testing is being done. Logically with more testing, there will be more positive cases. But with more testing, the percentage of persons testing positive should be reduced. This is not happening. The percentage of positive tests has increased significantly, and this is not supposed to be the norm with higher testing. Out of 205 tests done on the 20th March, 70 came back positive. This is more than one in every three.
Testing alone therefore does not explain the steep rise in cases. It is true however, that the caseload had begun to rise steeply just prior to the PPP/C assuming power but its precipitous spike since then has been unexpected.
Not only is the number of confirmed cases rising at an alarming rate but so too is the number of deaths. Ten persons have died over the past week; a staggering statistics but not as disturbing as the fact that the majority of these were only tested positive after they died which means that they may not have been treated for COVID-19.
What is even more worrying is that among the dead are persons in their 40s. The deaths of two women below the age of 50 should be a wake-up call to the entire country but more so to the Health Minister.
At present, there are eight COVID-19 patients in the Intensive Care Unit. The probability – and this is not a nice thing to say – is that two of these persons are going to die.
The health system is now overwhelmed. The number of active cases is more than 400. There is no longer any mandatory institutional isolation because the numbers are too overwhelming. And when positive cases are asked to self-isolate, community spread will increase.
Unless arrangements are being made to have persons vaccinated with the vaccine developed by the Russians, we should not be speaking about any other matters with the Russian ambassador. The number one priority for now should be to convince the President and his sidekick, the Vice President, that a national health emergency should be formally declared and there should be a reversion to some of the restrictions, which were originally in place from the second week of April.
The time has come to declare a national COVID-19 emergency. This will allow for the sort of lockdowns that are necessary to stabilize the spread of infections. Time is of the essence. The people will have to demand that the government revert to the longer curfews and greater social restrictions because unless that is done, the virus will spread more quickly and widely.
And that outside number of 20,000 cases and more than 2,000 deaths may become a reality. Let us hope that for the sake of the country that the President and his team stop being so concerned with the economy and become more concerned with human safety.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
