Coronavirus & BPO Outsourcing: What You Need To Know

[SPECIAL] Coronavirus & BPO Outsourcing

On this special episode, Derek Gallimore talks with Weng Capistrano, lead consultant for emerging and reemerging infectious diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO), about the emerging Coronavirus (COVID-19).

>>> CORONAVIRUS BUSINESS & LEGAL FAQ: Critical advisories & explainers for BPO & businesses in the Philippines

>>> CORONAVIRUS BUSINESS RECOVERY ACTION PLAN: Plain advice for businesses affected by COVID-19

>>> COVID GCQ UPDATE: Back to work: what PH employers and employees need to know

They discuss what you need to know about the Coronavirus (nCoV-2019 or COVID-2019): exactly what the Coronavirus is, how and why it’s dangerous if you’re infected, and current treatments available.  More importantly, they discuss the things that you, your community, and workplace, can do to stay safe – and the action steps you can take to reduce spread and exposure.

Weng Capistrano explains how infectious the virus is, its severity (ie death rate), the reason behind the recent spike of 15,000 new cases last Friday 14th, and the dangers of fear-mongering and fake news. They cover the BPO and outsourcing sector and what the industry can do to prepare.

Included in this podcast is the set of guidelines by the Philippine Department of Health (DoH) and some preventive measures on how everyone can prevent the disease from spreading (see links below).

Coronavirus and PH BPO updates

Keep up to date with all the Philippine BPO outsorucing news at the OA Newshub.

Sign up for weekly updates with the Inside Outsourcing newsletter.

How to listen to this podcast:

You can download and listen to this podcast from all the standard podcast players.  Search for “Outsource Accelerator Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts etc.  Or you can stream it now using the panel above.

Weng Capistrano: Coronavirus interview – BPO and Outsourcing

Derek Gallimore
Today we have a very different show for you. I’m recording this episode from the offices of the World Health Organization in Manila, Philippines. We’re discussing the emerging coronavirus outbreak. In this episode, we are talking to an expert from WHO about what you need to know about the coronavirus.

We go into exactly what the coronavirus is, how and why it’s dangerous if you’re infected, and current treatments available. More importantly, we discussed the things that you, your community, and workplace can do to stay safe, and the action steps you can take to reduce spread and exposure.

We also discuss how infectious this thing is, its severity, ie. the death rate, the reason behind the recent spike of 15,000 new cases last Friday the 14th, and the dangers of fear mongering and fake news. You might be asking what the coron virus has to do with outsourcing.

Well, the outsourcing industry is the single biggest employer in the Philippines. It is a people industry. There are nearly 1.5 million people in outsourcing, with most of them working in high rise office blocks, sharing confined space, and working around the clock with shift work, extra shifts and high pressure environments to contend with.

The BPO industry is prone to colds and flu and we’re right in the middle of the flu season right now. So it’s important more than ever for the industry to be aware of what it can do to stay healthy, happy and productive.

Chinese production and manufacturing and its economy has been hit hard by the effects of the coronavirus and the associated quarantine measures. The Philippine outsourcing industry relies on being dependable with zero downtime.

I can only imagine that disruption to BPO clients in the West if a major call center was quarantined and staff couldn’t show up for work. We explore what the BPO and outsourcing industry needs to know to stay safe and the steps they can take to keep their people and workplace risk free.

Today, I’m joined by Weng Capistrano. She’s an expert and lead consultant for emerging and reemerging infectious diseases with the World Health Organization. She’s probably one of the busiest people in the Philippines right now with everything that’s going on, so I’m super grateful for her time.

In this episode, we discuss a number of websites and resources that you can visit. All of these links are provided in the show notes to this podcast. You can find these at outsourceaccelerator.com/corona. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with your friends, colleagues and community. Let’s get into it.

Weng, can you start by explaining who is the WHO exactly and what their role is in this?

Weng Capistrano
The WHO [World Health Organization] is a specialist agency under the United Nations that is concerned with world public health. It has 194 member states in its responsibility. We provide technical assistance to every member states and they can request if they need us in some form of assistance regarding commodities or expertise.

Derek Gallimore
So you must be very busy, obviously, during this coronavirus situation. What is the WHO position and involvement within the corona virus management?

Weng Capistrano
The WHO already provided technical guidelines since the beginning of the outbreak. We provided technical guidance on case management, laboratory diagnosis, infection prevention and control, provision of care in home, as well as general guidelines on the public on how to do social distancing and personal hygiene.

Most of the countries who didn’t have capability to test the 2019 novel-coronavirus has been provided for by WHO, together with its different supranational laboratories or reference laboratories in the world.

Derek Gallimore
Weng, thank you for your time. You are the consultant for emerging and reemerging infectious diseases with the WHO. You are now in the position of managing this coronavirus situation as it emerges. Can you just introduce yourself and your professional background?

Weng Capistrano
I’m Weng Capistrano. I’m a field epidemiologists. We are fondly called the ‘disease detectives’ in the health sectors. I was with the Department of Health for 23 years. I’ve been part of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. That’s the national reference laboratory of the Department of Health.

I’ve been part of the response for SARS, for Influenza h1n1 pandemic, and of course the MERS-coronavirus. I’ve been to different places in the country for different kinds of outbreaks for infectious and tropical diseases. I’ve joined WHO last September 2019, after the Department of Health.

This time, I’m supporting the program of the disease prevention and control bureau of the Department of Health, which is the emerging and reemerging infectious disease program. All of diseases that are new and reemerging in the country or diseases that has been controlled before and are doing some kind of problem with the country. I have been supporting them for that.

Derek Gallimore
You’ve certainly got a lot of personal experience in a lot of those big previous outbreaks in the region.

Weng Capistrano
Yes, I was also trained in China CDC in 2013, for field epidemiology.

Derek Gallimore
Let’s get into it, then. What is the 2019 n-coronavirus? Can you explain the physiology of what this virus is?

Weng Capistrano
Okay, so this is a novel coronavirus, it means it’s new. It’s a new virus that has not been previously identified in humans. The strain of this virus had not been affecting human since then, but it was part of the coronavirus in animals. It first started in Wuhan, China in December 2019.

This is now called ‘COVID-19’, that’s the name of the disease. The virus is called the 2019 novel-coronavirus. A coronavirus is the large family of viruses. It is found both in animals and humans.

In humans, there are six known coronaviruses. That includes the MERS, the ‘Middle East Respiratory Syndrome’, and the ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’ or SARS. And this time, the 2019 novel-coronavirus is the seventh of the known coronavirus in humans.

Derek Gallimore
These are mutations of the same kind of virus body but then they mutate into different forms, and they take on their own lives from there.

Weng Capistrano
Yes. It’s much safer to say that this is a spill over from animals who have coronavirus to humans.

Derek Gallimore
The origin was Wuhan and, as you mentioned, we’ve had SARS, which was a previous iteration of the coronavirus. And then we had MERS. Both of them made headlines, there was a lot of cases and a number of deaths.

What is the relative comparison of the coronavirus? I understand one of the significant points of comparison is the ‘R naught’, which is the level of infectiousness and then another point is the danger of the virus. How many deaths to cases. Is that right?

Weng Capistrano
Yes, for now, the data about Coronavirus is not that complete yet. That’s why it’s called the ‘novel’ or new.

Based on the preliminary data, the reproductive rate or the rate of the virus that can infect an individual, and then that individual can infect another or transfer the virus to another, is between one to four persons per one infected.

However, this kind of reproductive rate is actually almost similar to MERS, SARS, and also for flu, influenza.

Derek Gallimore
The relevance to that ratio is if it’s a one to one infection rate, then it’s a fairly linear infection. If one person gets infected and pass it on to one person. Whereas, if one person passes it on to four people, then four people pass it on to 16.

Then it has more of an exponential growth in terms of spread and infection, is that right?

Weng Capistrano
Yes, that’s why it’s very significant to have control measures, so that this reproductive capacity of the virus will be halted.

But comparing to measles and varicella or chickenpox, they have the reproductive capability of almost 18 persons. This is not that significant compared to measles.

Derek Gallimore
That’s good to know. The difficulty in having these metrics is that when these viruses are new, you’re really figuring things out as you go along. You don’t necessarily have full visibility on the number of infections, on the cases, on the touch points. Is that right?

It’s only really in hindsight that you can get a fully-validated view on the ‘R naught’ and things like that.

Weng Capistrano
Yes. One of the main, important WHO role is for all data to be made available to all member states, and for all scientists and researchers to have a hand on this data so that we can understand this virus, more on its perspective, transmissibility, and severity.

However, the prevention and control port for the novel-coronavirus or the Coronavirus is almost the same as any other respiratory illness. That’s very basic. It’s personal hygiene, cough etiquette, hand washing…

Derek Gallimore
I want to dive into that as well, because a lot of it is just about the basic fundamentals and there’s not any reason to be overly-concerned about this virus because it can be managed.

In terms of the severity of the virus now, there was ebola which had a lot of headlines because that was obviously a severe disease. Where does the coronavirus sit in terms of the severity?

Weng Capistrano
The severity, our data is not that complete. However, given that almost 99% of the cases are in China, the data coming from China is that most of the cases have mild symptoms. Respiratory illness, runny nose, sore throat, cough, and fever.

But for the severe cases, it’s more on the older people and those persons who have underlying conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and liver problems.

Derek Gallimore
They’re probably already in a sort of weakened susceptible state. Is it true, I heard as well that there seems to be very few cases of children having the coronavirus or confirmed cases. I don’t know if they’re less susceptible.

Weng Capistrano
We don’t have that final data yet, but we should remember that the outbreak started from a seafood market. Most of the affected are those working or frequenting that seafood market.

There are less children going to that seafood market as well as working in that seafood market. It’s quite understandable that most of the cases are the adults.

Derek Gallimore
This is making headlines across the world. There’s a certain amount of fear about this and there’s also the added complexity of a lot of fake news. If you look at the numbers, there’s, you know, maybe sort of 65,000 confirmed cases now.

But, you compare that to the seasonal flu in the US and that’s around about 13 million cases with about 10,000 deaths. That is just normal garden flu and you certainly don’t get the same amount of news headlines as you do about the flu.

It’s important to put this into perspective….

Weng Capistrano
Yes, you’re right, Derek because influenza is a very seasonal and irregular sickness around the world. However, influenza has a vaccine. If you wanted to have protection against influenza, you can always get vaccine. But for Coronavirus, we don’t have a vaccine yet or cure.

That’s where the fear, it’s very understandable for people to get afraid because they cannot get vaccine against the disease. However, having said that, the non-pharmaceutical tool that is available for all of us, for every human is our capability to protect ourselves from this kind of diseases.

It is either influenza or SARS or MERS-CoV or to Coronavirus. It’s in our capability. We have the capability we have the tool to prevent this.

Derek Gallimore
I want to go into it soon. I just want to go a little bit deeper in terms of, I suppose, the downsides and explore what is this bug? If we catch it, what does it mean? It affects the breathing, it affects the lungs?

Can you just talk a little bit about the pathology of, what are the signs and symptoms of the coronavirus? Then we’re going to jump into how we can prevent this and what actions we should be taking.

Weng Capistrano
The signs and symptoms are usually fever, almost 90% of the cases in China had fever. And then respiratory illness such as cough, sore throat, colds. Of course, just like other coronaviruses, it actually has mild symptoms.

But again, if you have underlying conditions, or if you are elderly or very young, your immune system is not that capable to defeat the virus because this is a virus. A virus infection is a self-limiting one. It means you can defeat the virus if your immune system is strong.

This virus will go away and you will recover. However, if you have underlying conditions, that can complicate things. The virus can actually overcome your immune system and you will have severe form of the disease which is difficulty of breathing, shortness of breath, and pneumonia.

Derek Gallimore
Okay. On the fact that it is a virus and is not bacterial, can you just explain the core differences between what a viral infection is versus bacterial and also why things like antibiotics can’t necessarily help with viral infections?

Weng Capistrano
Antibiotics works with infection caused by bacteria. That’s why they are called antibacterial medication. While for viruses we have antivirals for influenza. But, we don’t have antivirus for coronavirus or MERS or SARS.

Having said that, this kind of virus can be overcome if we have a very strong immune system. Antibiotics doesn’t work for coronavirus, for the COVID-19. However, if you have complications that can be brought about by bacterial and pneumonia, your physician can actually do antibiotics treatment as well as support the treatment, Depends on the clinical management of the physician.

Derek Gallimore
It’s not about just taking whatever medications you can find. It’s about if you have concerns having this properly treated.

Weng Capistrano
Yes, definitely.

Derek Gallimore
There’s a big conversation around quarantine, often two weeks quarantine. What is it about the period of infection to having symptoms and then to passing it on and having that window of infection where you can pass it on? Can you explain a little bit about that?

Weng Capistrano
The incubation period means it’s the first time that you got the virus and the first sign that the symptoms appear up to 14 days. That’s the incubation period for MERS, SARS, as well as this coronavirus based on the current data.

Derek Gallimore
That’s when the virus is in your body, but it takes that time for it to grow to a certain level where you’re then symptomatic. Are you infectious within that time?

Weng Capistrano
The infectious period is the period wherein you can transfer the virus to other individual or to the environment as well. For Coronavirus, there are data or there are persons who already had been tested to be confirmed to have the virus, but they don’t have the symptoms.

However, these are very few. Based on the current outbreak, more people who are symptomatic or who have the symptoms are spreading the virus than those who don’t have the symptoms.

Derek Gallimore
That’s where it’s difficult. If there’s something obvious like measles, where there’s red marks in the body. Whereas, if you just have a bit of a runny nose, it’s more difficult to identify and contain.

Weng Capistrano
Yes, but if you have a runny nose, you already have a symptom. The terminology in the onset of illness means any sign of clinical symptom. It can be fever, runny nose or sore throat. That will be the first sign of the symptoms.

Derek Gallimore
Right. This is a side subject, but do you know if the health system here has been inundated with people with concerns that they’ve got a runny nose? Is that something that the system has to cope with a lot of inquiries about? What would normally be very common cold symptoms?

Weng Capistrano
Yes. They have a lot of inquiries, I think, because they have a hotline. The Department of Health hotline is 711-1001, 711-1002. That’s the 24/7 hotline wherein you can ask everything that the Department of Health is concerned with.

They’re getting a lot of inquiries, especially those person in the condominium where there are Chinese people living. These are the most common inquiries right now.

Derek Gallimore
This is the delicate balance, isn’t it? Because you want people to be aware and to be conscious and also to take the positive health measures they can, but then you also don’t want a sense of fear and overstate the risk.

Weng Capistrano
Yes. And remember this is now a flu season. January is a flu season for the country and elsewhere in the world, because almost everywhere in the world is very cold right now.

You must remind them that the flu signs and symptoms are almost the same as with Coronavirus. However, if you don’t have history of travel from the affected areas, specifically China, you don’t have to worry about it.

Derek Gallimore
Okay. Let’s get into the nuts and bolts, then, of the things that we can all take into our own control. Initially, what are the recommended measures if you suspect or fear that you might have symptoms of the coronavirus?

Weng Capistrano
First of all, you must ask yourself, did I have a travel outside of the country from the past 14 days? If you have a history of travel from China or Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, that’s where the areas are being targeted in terms of history of travel for the Philippines.

If you’ve been there for 14 days from the time that you have the sign of respiratory illness or fever, you must call the nearest health facility or hospital. It’s very good for you to call them before you go there. Because otherwise, you can see a lot of queue in the hospital.

Derek Gallimore
I assume the health systems are overloaded at the moment, so you need to take the measures you need to take, but also you need to be mindful of the system, struggling to cope.

I think, I’m not sure if you can confirm the numbers, but I believe there’s about 65,000 known cases and of that there’s about 63,000 or 64,000 in China. It is still quite localized, is it? A two to one region.

Coronavirus Philippines

Weng Capistrano
Yes. Also, I would like to explain that the spike with the numbers is not because they change or revise…

Derek Gallimore
…12 hours, there’s been a jump in known cases by about 15,000. But actually, you’re explaining that that’s because of technical broadening of the diagnosis.

Weng Capistrano
Yes. Right now, China is classifying their confirmed cases as lab confirm, or those were tested in the laboratory, and the clinically confirmed, all those patients who have findings in their X-ray testing.

In China right now, you will be called or classified as confirmed case even though you don’t have a laboratory testing that you have the virus, but you are positive for chest X-ray finding you will be classified as clinically confirmed. And they went back to the other cases that they had since the beginning of the outbreak.

That’s the explanation for the spike on the cases in China.

Derek Gallimore
Right. It’s good again to keep this in context. There’s a lot of fear because these numbers have jumped up, but actually, it’s just a brief statement of the figures.

I think, as well, when the infected case number increases, it actually reduces the severity because then the deaths relative to the infection cases actually drop, so it’s maybe below 2% rate.

Weng Capistrano
Definitely.

Derek Gallimore
Okay. So if you feel you’ve got symptoms, what should you do in terms of your daily activities? Should you skip work? Should you avoid public transport? Should you wear a mask?

Weng Capistrano
There’s a guideline from the Department of Health on the preparedness and response on the workplace. They can go to the website of the Department of Health for that.

It’s quite long so I will not discuss it in detail.

Derek Gallimore
We’ll put that in the show notes. They’re going to see that.

Weng Capistrano
Please do so. The first thing is that if you’re sick, If you have fever or respiratory illness, you must call sick. It means you have to stay at home and then call your supervisor or your boss or your HR department to inform them that you are sick.

Then if you develop the symptoms, if you have difficulty in breathing or shortness of breath, you must visit or call the nearest facility within your home. However, if you only have respiratory illness and you think that you’re just up and about, no fever, you can always wear a mask.

Medical mask or face mask is recommended for those who have respiratory illness, so that you cannot infect others or your cough or sneeze can be covered by your face mask or medical mask. You must also wash your hands frequently or have a readily available alcohol rub in your pocket.

We also have guidelines on the transport on the LRT or MRT. It’s part of the guidelines that the Department of Health has, where they are advised to clean, disinfect all the point of contacts. Point of contacts are the elevators, the stairs.

It’s also applicable for the BPOs because most of your offices are in the tall buildings. It’s advisable that every hour, somebody must wipe disinfectant. Just a normal disinfectant to all the elevator buttons and doorknobs.

Derek Gallimore
We should maybe have covered that earlier, but how is this transferred? Commonly I think people assume that it’s by coughing or by breath but this is also, has been confirmed as it can be transferred by touch or on surfaces?

Weng Capistrano
Basically, it’s a droplet transmission. It means when you cough, when you sneeze, when you sing, when you talk, there are droplets coming from the upper respiratory part of our lungs that goes out. But because they are large in particle they dropped within one meter or within three feet from you.

It means it cannot travel beyond that. So, if it drops it can drop to a surface, it can drop to a person. That’s why we are saying that if you cough or sneeze you must cover it or flex your elbow to cover it.

Then if it drops in the surface, it must be cleaned. It must be disinfected so that nobody will be touching it.

Derek Gallimore
Right. Is it very resistant once it’s outside of the body? Could it stay there minutes or hours or days?

Weng Capistrano
The data on that is not yet fully realized, but there are some preliminary reports from China that they did environmental investigation. It means they swabbed some environments and they found the virus. But the data on how many hours will it stay or minutes or seconds, it’s not confirmed yet.

Derek Gallimore
This needs to be taken seriously, but it’s also about calming any panic and it’s just about sticking to what should be normal, best practices in terms of frequent hand washing, using face masks if you’re, I suppose at risk or sick, and keep surfaces clean, and just basic hygiene. That’s probably the 80/20 rule in terms of the biggest impact on preventing the spread of this.

Weng Capistrano
Yes, you are correct. It’s very basic. It’s what we do every day, actually. But in this kind of situation, we enhance it. If you do hand washing every four hours, now it can be every two hours or every hour. It depends on the frequency of your exposure or contact to possible sick person or contaminated areas

Derek Gallimore
Is there anything proactive that people can do? Now, I just read this morning that a lady for Valentine’s Day, a florist is selling a Corona bouquet and it comes with a mask. Is there anything proactive people can do to keep healthy such as vitamins?

There’s probably a lot of snake oils coming out of the market to help people stay healthy or prevent these things. Is there anything that you recommend or is it just a good diet, good sleep, and the basics?

Weng Capistrano
It’s the healthy lifestyle, basic recommendation that we have. It’s to have a good sleep, exercise daily, balanced diet. That’s everything that you need to have a very good immune system that can fight off any virus, not just this. It’s nothing special, just the usual thing that we do.

Derek Gallimore
And maybe just watch out for those in your community that are slightly weaker or maybe the elderly or people that…

Weng Capistrano
Yes. You have to avoid sick persons, especially those who have respiratory illness. Also, you have to cook your meat and eggs and fish properly or totally. It’s not just for COVID-19 but for other bacteria.

Coronavirus & Philippine Outsourcing

Derek Gallimore
I want to bring this round in, too, and we can finish up with this, but the BPO industry is a huge sector in the Philippines that employs 1.2 million people. A lot of these people are in high rises, they’re in tight office situations, a lot of them are based in Manila.

A lot of them are working night shift, different shifts, long shifts. People are tired, coughing, and there’s a lot of communal environment. Do you see, is this sort of a particularly high risk industry? Or what can the industry do to make this not a big issue?

Weng Capistrano
First of all, it’s a part of the general public recommendation by the WHO that you enhance the personal hygiene practices. If somebody is coughing, they have to wear mask. Then of course, if the symptoms persist and develop more difficulties in breathing or shortness of breathing, they have to go to clinic or health facility.

HR of BPOs can actually be proactive with this. They have to put up materials or posters to remind the employees or the staff that they have to enhance their personal hygiene practices, their cough etiquette.

There should be hand washing soap and tissue papers that are available in their sink. Because sometimes people wants to hand wash but there’s no soap. They have to be available. Then of course, what I told before, the touch point of elevators, doorknobs and even your keyboards should be cleaned every day.

That would be added precaution for BPOs. And of course, you have to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Even though they are night shift, they have to have an eight-hour sleep after work, have a balanced diet, and then exercise.

These are preventive measures that doesn’t need medication or vaccine. But, these are the things that are available in each and every one of us that we can do our part to stop the spread of this disease and it will not enter the community as well.

Derek Gallimore
The basic is the lowest hanging fruit which is keeping people healthy, not overworking them, ensuring that they have adequate rest and they’re eating well. And then, as you say, not only maintain the expected hygiene, but maybe ramp that in terms of cleaning services.

Ensuring that the CR and washrooms have the necessary things to keep hands clean, keep things clean. You were mentioning that it would be wise for HR departments to have an action plan or certainly to start building out these plans so that they they have responses.

Would you recommend that that would just be mimicking the guidelines of the Department of Health?

Weng Capistrano
Yes. Thank you for reminding that. Yes, HR should have a preparedness plan for this kind of health events. This would help a lot when the true scenario comes.

It would be good for HR to do scenario building based on the Department of Health guidelines, because in that guideline, it said that you must have a referral system on how to refer sick staff or those who are suspected to have the disease. The HR and the management should meet and discuss that guidelines. They can seek assistance, technical assistance from the Department of Health to explain it much further.

Then they should have a preparedness plan documented so that anybody who is on duty when the thing happened when there’s a suspect case or a confirmed case in their office, they know what to do.

Derek Gallimore
The outsourcing industry is all about having 100% uptime and being reliable because there are clients that obviously need the services in place. It is very vulnerable, I think, to disruptions. It would be, you know, highly sensible to have, as they do in terms of technology, have redundancies in place and have very clear action plans, whether it’s for the coronavirus or even a flu outbreak.

Weng Capistrano
Yes, definitely. Because a flu outbreak is having so much effect on their reproductive area of the disease. It actually evolves every year. That’s why you have a vaccine every year. Then, based on the study of influenza actually is the first cause of absenteeism not only in the workplace, but in school.

I think HR should have a very good plan on influenza. If they have it, it can also be applicable to any respiratory illness.

Derek Gallimore
That’s true, isn’t it? There should be a key document for HR because as you say, absenteeism and sickness and even the common colds and flu is such a huge cost to these organizations. It’s certainly worth looking into.

As you said, there are the guidelines by the Department of Health, we’ll put the link in the show notes, so make sure you check that out. As you say, look, this is a serious situation and the World Health Organization is doing an incredible job in terms of assisting the local governments and managing this.

I believe, also, they’re reaching out to philanthropic organizations, get more funding specific for this. We’ve seen incredible organization and execution of how to manage this. I want to thank you for that.

Is there anything else you do want to cover or you think it’s really just reiterating that people need to stick to the basics and also then refer to their local health provider if they have any queries?

Weng Capistrano
Yes, that’s it. Also, I would like to enjoin everybody to fight ‘infodemics’. It’s the broader proliferation of fake news in the social media. So if you want to get the proper or the exact information, please visit WHO.int, that’s our website, and also doh.gov.ph. That’s the website of the Department of Health

Derek Gallimore

That was Weng Capistrano. She is the lead consultant for emerging and reemerging infectious diseases with the WHO. As mentioned, if you want any of the show notes, any of the links we mentioned in this, go to outsourceaccelerator.com/corona. And if you want to ask us anything, as always, just send us an email to [email protected] See you next time.