The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la is sound­ing an alarm over the po­ten­tial for an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es, as cit­i­zens go to health fa­cil­i­ties to get their flu shots, as an­oth­er flu sea­son be­gins.

The cur­rent in­fluen­za sea­son will run from Oc­to­ber 2020 to March 2021.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment on the mat­ter, Dr Rai Rag­bir says he is con­cerned that the Gov­ern­ment’s sys­tem of ad­min­is­ter­ing the H1N1 vac­cine to the gen­er­al pub­lic can cause a se­ri­ous in­crease in the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es.

“With­out the Min­istry of Health out­lin­ing a very clin­i­cal and sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach of ac­com­mo­dat­ing so many per­sons at our var­i­ous pub­lic health cen­tres, this sets the stage for an in­tense ex­plo­sion of COVID-19 cas­es,” the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP said.  “Fur­ther, the MOH has been short on pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic, such as the num­ber of in­fluen­za cas­es and deaths for the flu sea­son in 2019/2020.”

As an ex­pe­ri­enced GP, he urged cau­tion: “This sit­u­a­tion, if not han­dled prop­er­ly, can re­sult in our health fa­cil­i­ties be­com­ing hotspots for pos­si­ble ex­po­sure by cit­i­zens to coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions”.

He says that 20 per­cent of per­sons who test pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus show no symp­toms; al­so many with symp­toms of coro­n­avirus are al­so vis­it­ing the same health fa­cil­i­ties for med­ical eval­u­a­tion and test­ing. This, he in­sist­ed, pro­vides the per­fect plat­form for the spread of the virus. Dr Rag­bir said we have been wit­ness­ing the dai­ly spread, which, as of Sep­tem­ber 26th, to­talled 4,312 cas­es with 70 deaths.

Dr Rag­bir lament­ed: “This cur­rent sit­u­a­tion can­not be left unchecked, as al­ready the virus has had dev­as­tat­ing, neg­a­tive im­pacts on the coun­try’s econ­o­my, in­clud­ing mas­sive re­trench­ment.”

He said, “Health cen­tres can be deemed a pub­lic space, and it is high­ly like­ly, giv­en the cat­e­gories of per­sons ad­vised to get the vac­ci­na­tion that more than five per­sons will gath­er at any one time. This will be in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion of the Pub­lic Health Act.”

Dr Rag­bir in­sist­ed: “A great fear and con­cern will be that of moth­ers who will be pet­ri­fied to take their six-month old in­fant to a health cen­tre for the manda­to­ry im­mu­niza­tion, in­clud­ing the flu vac­cine, re­sult­ing in ex­pos­ing that child to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­com­ing in­fect­ed.”

He said this sit­u­a­tion high­lights a re­al and rea­son­able con­cern by moth­ers and gives cre­dence to the fact that the MOH must em­bark on a sig­nif­i­cant ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign re­gard­ing its sys­tem of ad­min­is­ter­ing this vac­cine to the var­i­ous cat­e­gories of at risk per­sons.

The Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP said it is im­por­tant to em­pow­er per­sons, to al­lay their fears through ed­u­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion, so that they can get their year­ly and much need­ed flu vac­cine in a safe en­vi­ron­ment, which will make it much eas­i­er for health care work­ers.

Dr Rag­bir said is it im­por­tant to note that the flu shot does not give one the flu, and that get­ting the vac­cine serves as no pro­tec­tion against COVID-19.

“How­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to have a co-in­fec­tion of both virus­es at the same time,” he said, “and there­fore, these are fac­tors which must be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when em­bark­ing on vac­ci­na­tion of the wider pop­u­la­tion.”

The Cu­mu­to Man­zanil­la MP said, the mea­sure out­lined above can be seen as a tem­po­rary off-site set up, so that all work­ers and re­cip­i­ents will know that all is be­ing done to en­sure their to­tal pro­tec­tion, there­by en­cour­ag­ing per­sons to get their flu vac­cine, in a con­trolled set­ting, while at the same time, ob­serv­ing all health pro­to­cols.