RITM apologizes to House solon for saying he is COVID-19 positive

March 28, 2020

The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) Friday night said ACT-CIS Partylist Rep. Erick Go Yap saying the lawmaker is negative of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), instead of positive as it earlier reported.

In a statement, the RITM apologized to Yap, chairman of the House appropriations committee, saying it was caused by an ''encoding error.

''"We wish to publicly apologize to Hon. Erick Go Yap of ACT-CIS Partylist for forwarding a report of his COVID-19 results that displayed a clerical oversight," said the RITM.

"Rep. Yap remains negative of COVID-19," it added.Yap, in accepting the RITM's apology, said although the last 48 hours '' has been very hard for me and for everyone around me'', the incident should not be ''taken against the RITM.''

''This is just a clerical error and should not be taken against RITM,'' he  said.The RITM said the incident does not mean that Yap was a case of being a "false positive".

"This isolated incident was brought about by an encoding error which was discovered late last night by the Molecular Biology Laboratory (MBL) of the Department of Health-Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (DOH-RITM)," it explained.

It said the individual responsible for the incident was enlisted as an augmentation staff from outside the regular workforce of RITM.

The employee is being dealt with administratively, RITM said.

"Again, we profusely and sincerely apologize to Hon. Erick Go Yap for the unnecessary discomfort this incident has caused," said RITM. "We promise that this, and other associated incidents, will never happen again."

Last Wednesday, Yap was found to be positive of COVID-19 after undergoing sample testing last March 15.The discovery came after Yap attended a meeting in Malacañang on March 21 to discuss the proposed special powers for President Rodrigo Duterte to combat the COVID-19 crisis. DMS