During today’s plenary hearing, The Regional Secretary for Health and Civil Protection, Pedro Ramos, said he will attend the hearing requested by the Socialist Party (PS) to clarify that computer failure was the reason between the anomalies between the Director-General for Health (DGS) and the Madeiran Health Service (DRS) daily Covid-19 figures.
Pedro Ramos further derided the fact that Paulo Cafôfo had failed to attend the plenary session even though he had initiated the original request for a hearing; a fact that was seized upon by PSD delegate Rubina Leal, who jeered that the PS could not face the contradictory evidence. She went on to say that the socialists “enjoy causing alarm among the population, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t meet the challenge!”
Challenge or not, socialist Miguel Iglésias wanted to know exactly what is behind the misleading figures, while fellow socialist, Elisa Seixas, said that the PSD will not have the “quick and painless hearing they are looking for.” Retorting, Pedro Ramos said that “the figures are a subject that some people want to make a issue of. He insisted that the discrepancies were due to computer failure. He further stated that “we always notified every one of the situation, and have responded to all questions as a matter of urgency, therefore we have already given the answers to the questions. “It was a computer failure, nothing more, nothing less. We inform the DGS of our figures, and we have the emails to prove it. The delay was in the notification, not in the diagnosis.”
However, many took to the comments sections of their local newspapers to air their concerns over the lack of transparency over the figures; although today, oddly enough both the DGS and DRS figures match. What most people are worried about is that the DRS figures were always lower or higher than those released by the DGS, if their figures were high, ours were low and vice versa, which has given rise to the number shuffling theory.
Let’s just hope that the computer glitches have been fixed, and both parties can accurately assess the daily cases of contagion.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
