It was disconcerting to learn that the Department of Health has reached fewer than 60 of the 331 airline passengers who had come into contact with two carriers of the deadly novel coronavirus (nCoV), which has killed 427 people and infected more than 20,000.
Answering questions at a Senate hearing Tuesday, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III acknowledged that only 17 percent or “roughly a fifth” of the 331 passengers on the three flights taken by the infected Chinese couple—the 44-year-old man who became the first fatality outside of China and his 38-year-old female companion.
Both had traveled from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the nCoV outbreak, to Hong Kong and from there took a Cebu Pacific flight to Cebu, arriving on Jan. 21. Then they later took another Cebu Pacific flight to Dumaguete, and days later took a Philippine Airlines flight to Manila.
At first, Duque seemed to blame his subordinates for not informing him about the slow pace of contact tracing and told senators that he could ill afford to be bogged down in “operational details” as attending to these might make him lose sight of “the bigger picture.”
Then Duque also blamed the airlines, accusing them of not sharing the contact details of the passengers by invoking the Data Privacy Law.
But both Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific said they had, in fact, shared those contact details with the Department of Health and had also tried to contact the passengers on their own.
In the same hearing, Manila International Airport Authority General Manager Ed Monreal said that given the urgency of the situation, he saw no reason for the airlines to withhold that information or cooperate with the authorities.
Of course, it is time to stop pointing fingers and to move more swiftly to address the nCoV problem. We need Secretary Duque’s excuses as much as we need outlandish suggestions from some senators that the police be used to track the passengers as if they were criminals, or meaningless assurances that the President puts public safety first. Time is of the essence.
By official accounts, the infected couple arrived from China on Jan. 21 and were admitted to hospital on Jan. 25.
This gave them four days during which they might infect others as they traveled to Cebu, Dumaguete and Manila—including the 331 passengers on board the flights they took. Anyone they transmitted the virus to during that time could be passing it on as well to an unknown number of people—possibly hundreds every day that they are not identified and confined.
That’s not just an operational detail, Secretary Duque. That is the big picture.