President Rodrigo Duterte chats with Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion on the sidelines of the 10th Filipina Entrepreneurship Summit (FES10) at the World Trade Center in Pasay City on March 6, 2018. (ALBERT ALCAIN/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO)
Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion on Wednesday apologized for criticizing doctors and medical societies opposed to rapid tests on workers.
“First of all, I would like to put on record that I have nothing but the utmost gratitude and admiration for the doctors and frontliners who continue to do a great service for our country during this crisis,” Concepcion said in a statement.
“I apologize if my words were perceived to criticize doctors in general. I hope we will be united in our efforts. With this, I extend my deepest thanks to all frontliners that continue to go beyond the call of duty for our people. We can and we will heal as one,” he added.
During the televised Laging Handa briefing Wednesday, Concepcion criticized doctors and members of medical societies who he said should instead suggest a better alternative than keep on “complaining”.
“Problema nitong mga doctor, salita nang salita, wala namang ginagawa. Complain nang complain. Ang mangyayari dito kung magsasarado ulit yung ekonomiya ng Pilipinas, maraming mawawalan ng trabaho,” Concepcion said.
(The problem with these doctors is that they keep on talking but are doing nothing. They keep on complaining. What will happen if the Philippine economy closes again is that a lot of people will lose their jobs.)
“We can’t afford another lockdown. My appeal to all these doctors, if you have a better alternative, why don’t you tell us that better alternative?” he added.
Medical societies across the country expressed their opposition to the use of rapid test kits as these can give a “false sense of security” to the employees and cause further strain on the businesses’ and the health-care system’s resources.
The Philippine Society of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID) on Tuesday said “there’s no added value” in requiring antibody testing for workers who neither are persons under investigation (PIU) or persons under monitoring (PUM).
“The available rapid antibody test kits will just tell us whether you have or do not have the antibody. It does not tell you whether that antibody is high enough to be protective or to neutralize the virus,” Dr. Issa Alejandria, the PSMID president, said.
“The test will perform poorly among asymptomatics. The virus belongs to the same family of coronavirus as the common cold. Your results may be a false positive since you have antibodies against the common cold,” she added.
Because of the numerous false positive results, the PSMID and the other medical societies—the Philippine College of Physicians, Philippine College of Occupational Medicine, Philippine Medical Association, Philippine Society of General and Internal Medicine, Philippine Academy of Family Physicians, and the Philippine Society of Public Health Physicians (PSPHP) also expressed their apprehensions.
But Concepcion defended the use of rapid test kits for employees in the private sector, saying it is “better to test than not to test.”
“This virus has brought a devastating blow to the physical and financial health of our nation. And we must work together to save both,” Concepcion said.
“We are at war with a common enemy and need to use everything in our arsenal to fight it. My goal in setting up Project Ark is to make all tests affordable and accessible to every Filipino,” he said.
Project ARK (antibody rapid test kits) is an initiative of the private sector that Concepcion spearheaded himself to increase the testing of workers in private companies.
“Through the tireless work of our private donors and medical volunteers, we were able to bring down the cost of rapid test kits by more than 50%. We hope to do the same for RT-PCR [real-time polymerase chain reaction]. This will greatly help augment government efforts in increasing the testing capacity of our country,” he further said.
The Department of Health (DOH), however, stated that returning employees are not required to undergo any COVID-19 screening before they could go back to unless they show symptoms or were exposed to a COVID-19 positive patient. (Rommel F. Lopez)