The president of the Bohol Medical Society (BMS), in a letter to Gov. Arthur Yap, expresses the group’s recommendations in the handling of the Covid cases in the province.
The BMS is an organization composed of physicians who are based in Bohol.
In his letter, dated June 9, 2020, Dr. Jefferson Ong lauded the way the prov’l gov’t is handling the crisis situation in Bohol but he also gave same recommendations regarding the matter.
Ong said, “We, the organization of physicians in Bohol, would like to thank you (the governor) for the leadership
that you have shown during this trying time of an unprecedented health crisis. Your choice to include the healthcare professionals in policymaking has worked for the good of the people of Bohol in the past several months. Know that we will always lend you the needed expertise and whatever resources we have at our disposal to manage the impact of Covid-19 and any other disease on our province and our people.”
Ong continued by saying, “It is therefore in this same spirit of cooperation and concern for our community that we give to you these positional statements regarding some recent issues of medicalconcern.”
The doctor then mentioned in his letter, “Perhaps the most important point is our recommendation that General Community Quarantine (GCQ) should be maintained until a definite treatment or a safe and effective vaccine is readily available. This should be the lowest level of community quarantine we can allow at this time considering the rapid movement of people in the town centers and the urban areas.”
Ong also stated in the letter this: “The picture of the rapid spread of a respiratory contagion can translate into a very real and dire healthcare scenario very quickly.”
The doctor then touched on the issue of testing by saying in his letter, “Regarding the use of Rapid Antibody Diagnostic Tests (RDT or RAT) in the screening for CoVID-19, we strongly discourage this due to its largely misleading results.”
He added, “Following the guidelines of the Philippine Society of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID), whose official statement refutes the usefulness of the RDT/RAT in the screening and diagnosis of CoVID-19. This position as consistent with a letter issued by the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) in June 5, 2020 stating; ‘…that we do not recommend rapid antibody test for mass testing and as a prerequisite for return to work!’ A negative result causes one to have a false sense of security while a false positive result can cause undue alarm and consequent waste of resources.”
The doctor also said in his letter, ”We still recommend the use of the Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) as the test of choice for the diagnosis of CoVID-19. We therefore urge that equipping, training accreditation and activation of RT-PCR testing laboratories should be a top priority for the government if ever we want to ease the community quarantine measures to a level where economic functionality for most sectors will be feasible.“
Ong mentioned further in his letter, “We stand by the protocols issued by our colleagues in the Medical Technical Team of the Bohol COVID-19 Technical Working Group that strictly requires 14-days of facility quarantine upon arrival of any individual in Bohol. In the absence of readily accessible RT-PCR testing with timely results, the 14 days quarantine for all persons entering the province must continue to be mandatory. Facility quarantine is highly recommended to ensure compliance, but home quarantine may be allowed with very strict guidelines that we need not reiterate here. We believe that the protocols issued by the Medical Technical Team is thorough in this regard.”
The president of physicians reiterated in his letter, “We cannot stress enough, the pervading reality that our healthcare system remains inadequate to handle a full-blown outbreak of CoViD-19, learning from how it has affected some of our neighboring provinces. It is from that dire situation of an overburdened and thinned out healthcare workforce that we ask our leaders to save us.”
Ong continued to write by saying: “Bohol has enjoyed relative safety due to our stark adherence to recommended protocols and guidelines, and it is vital to our future economic viability that we continue to do so,” Ong stressed.
Ong concluded: ”COVID-19 has ever been in our minds in the past four months and it is eating away at the morale of our people, but it has not beaten us and we believe that it will not succeed as long as we remain steadfast in our hope. Our hope lies in the Lord God our Creator who promises to never leave us nor forsake us. His promise to give us a future and a hope for our salvation by His own mighty hands. In this hope, we pray that all of us willingly become His instruments.“