Tony Leachon, the now-resigned special adviser of the National Task Force against COVID-19 on Wednesday, said it would be hard to make “adequate and agile” decisions if the government would base on the “old” COVID-19 data of the Department of Health.
In Joseph Morong’s report on “24 Oras,” Leachon said using the DOH data as the basis of quarantine decisions is problematic.
“You cannot make adequate and agile decisions on adequate reporting, and then ang country will suffer kung magkamali ka ng [if you make a mistake] in quarantine intervention. If it is an old data, how can you decide on that?” Leachon said.
“Hindi mo rin ma-monitor kung alin diyan ang magiging epidemic. Suddenly, magugulat ka na lang, mayroon na lang rapid spread in Cebu and the Eastern Visayas kasi hindi ang data fresh,” he added.
(You are not able to monitoring which of that would be epidemic. Suddenly, you’ll be surprised there would be a rapid spread in Cebu and the Eastern Visayas because the data are not fresh.)
Leachon further stressed that he could not understand why DOH cannot fix the problem of coronavirus cases reporting.
“‘Yun nga ang hindi ko maintindihan; the most important thing na gagawin ng Department of Health is to correct the data, bakit hindi magawa’ yun? Eh, everything is anchored on that, eh,” he said.
(I don’t understand. The most important thing that the Department of Health should do is to correct the data. Why they can’t do that? Everything is anchored on that.)
DOH has yet to respond to Leachon’s latest criticism.
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The formers NTF advised said he was asked to resign because of his criticisms on DOH’s system of responding to the pandemic.
“It’s with deepest regret that I announce that I am not anymore the Special Adviser of National Adviser-COVID 19 effective today,” he said on social media.
“I have my full respect for Secretary [Carlito] Galvez and we will remain as good friends. Lots of good memories. But I have to move on,” Leachon added.
One of his criticisms says, “It’s a sad day as we anticipate the IATF recommendations on Monday to PRRD. Forgive me, I think the lead agency has lost focus in everything. Risk communication , priorities , data management , and execution of all plans.”
“Without a clear, cohesive and transparent communication campaign from DOH, the noise from an overly stressed-out and highly emotional general public, interposed with a varied mixture of political opinions and even potentially misleading facts, will sadly just drown out the truth,” resigned Leachon also said last week.