Govt to be blame for spike in cases

THE nation is waiting for an apology from the health minister and his secretary for the recent spike in the Covid-19 cases in Port Moresby.
Their recent statements regarding the current surge of the viral infections lack maturity and is capable of throwing the country into panic mode with severe consequences to the economy.
The source of this second wave of infections was the Central Public Health Laboratory, a fact that needs acknowledgement from the minister and secretary.
They need to come out and report to the people if there was a flip in the testing process that led to staff infections that is now affecting the city population.
It will be informative to us as to how and why we are at war with the virus and how we intend to overcome this.
It is the responsibility of the minister, hence, the secretary must ensure all activities relating to health service delivery, including testing for the Covid-19, poses no danger to its staff and to the public.
The command chain stops at their desks and the recent reaction in the media has been immature with propensity of sparking off an unnecessary fear among the people.
The assumption by the secretary that we always have symptomatic cases at large in the community and so the implied hypothesis of the Covid-19 being ever present long before the first identified case is a lame excuse and a diversion of the otherwise known facts.
The government’s measures were effective up until the day of case spike announced.
This country always had, and will continue, to have people with flu-like symptoms and should
not be used to divert attention from the more obvious cause for this sudden increase in Port Moresby.
The responsibility for the rise of infections in Port Moresby lies on the government, particularly with the health minister and secretary, not sending the likes of
Dr Molumi and Dr Sabi into
overdrive mode trying to cleanup the mess.

Sapulokavek Lihima,
Goroka