The Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City (FILE PHOTO)
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Health authorities in Central Visayas are considering taking legal actions against the individual spreading unverified information pertaining to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests on social media.
The Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH – 7) and the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC), in separate statements, condemned the spreading of unvalidated claims.
Their statements were issued on Friday, March 27, 2020.
Both DOH – 7 and VSMMC said a certain Facebook user named Rommell Rosito published a post which listed the names, addresses and the location of the hospitals where the patients were admitted with COVID-19.
“The said post in social media by Mr. Rosito, who is not an employee of DOH nor a duly-authorized individual, contains unverified and unvalidated information, which have the propensity to endanger public safety and security,” DOH-7 stated.
They said that their respective legal teams were now coordinating to look into the concern to see what appropriate actions or charges would be filed against the user who posted it.
It can be recalled in previous conferences that officials from the VSMMC and the DOH-7 announced that information pertaining to individuals, who were qualified to undergo COVID-19 tests in the former’s laboratory would be treated ‘with utmost confidentiality’.
The post from Rommel Rosito has since been taken down, but screenshots of it from other netizens were still making the rounds as of March 28, 2020./dbs