Health Secretary Francisco Duque III clarified that the director of the hospital conducting COVID-19 testing to all Filipinos was not removed from office.
“The DOH wishes to clarify that Dr. Celia Carlos remains the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM),” the DOH said in a statement.
Duque came under fire in social media as a memo he supposedly signed leaked on social media, which showed that he replaced Carlos with DOH Assistant Secretary Nestor Santiago.
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The Department’s Personnel Order No. 2020-1011 dated March 21, 2020 reads “in the exigency of service, Dr. Nestor F. Santiago… is hereby designated as OIC-Director IV of the RITM, this Department, in a concurrent capacity.” The order was supposedly effective immediately.
In a phone interview with CNN Philippines, Duque said there had been an “error” in the DOH-issued personnel order.
“The circulating issuance stating that Dir. Carlos has been replaced by Asec. Santiago is an erroneous draft of the document which was inadvertently posted but immediately taken down,” DOH said a statement.
Instead, RITM shall be placed under the “supervision” of DOH Assistant Secretary Santiago “to allow Director Carlos, with her technical expertise, to focus on optimizing RITM functions.”
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The department said Asec Santiago “shall guide and manage the expansion of testing capacity to public and private laboratories, and attend to coordination with other agencies.”
“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and confusion this has caused,” the DOH said.
