MANILA – Palace rejected Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s call for a change of leadership in the country’s pandemic response following the recent surge of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases.
According to Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, the government would rather focus on how to address the pandemic than discuss leadership change.
“It is contrary to the basics of emergency medicine to change leadership in the middle of a pandemic. I don’t think we will achieve anything by that,” Roque said on Monday.
In a Twitter post on Monday morning, Lacson said the significant increase in COVID-19 cases makes it feel like there is no one in charge and “we are like on autopilot”.
The senator did not mention any names but he is a known critic of Sec. Francisco Duque III of the Department of Health (DOH) whom he criticized several times for mishandling the pandemic situation.
Meanwhile, based on DOH’s 4 p.m. advisory on Monday, a total of 8,355 new cases were recorded which pushed the country’s total to 803,398.
From the total cases, 145,726 were active infections – 97.5 percent are mild, 1.1 percent are asymptomatic, 0.6 are severe, and 0.5 are in critical condition.
The health department also logged 145 new recoveries which pushed the country’s total to 646,237. 10 additional deaths were recorded for a total of 13, 435 fatalities./PN
