

Opinion
HEALTH
Faulty Planning at its Best
by Miles Nicole See
Posted on December 11, 2020
Government should to refine the pandemic control strategies, addressing the following urgent conditions: hospital workforce efficiency, failure of case finding and isolation, failure of contact tracing and quarantine, transportation safety, workplace safety, public compliance with self-protection, social amelioration."
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Despite imposing a lockdown longer than the 76-day quarantine of Wuhan, the first epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, the Philippine government still fails in its effort to completely eradicate, nor lessen, the spread of COVID-19.
For the past eight months, the Philippine government has implemented different measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This includes the expansion of testing labs across the country and a community quarantine in Luzon and selected provinces. President Rodrigo Duterte also signed the passage into law of the Bayanihan Act 2, which is expected to finance healthcare needs such as medicines, vaccines, and COVID-19 testing kits.
Additionally, the government has extended the “state of calamity” in the Philippines until September 2021 to give the national and local governments time to gather their resources to better address the pandemic.
However, cases of COVID-19 in the country are continuously increasing. Nine months after the confirmation of the first COVID-19 case in the country, over 444,164 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the Philippines-- 26,454are active cases.
John Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center even stated in a report that the Philippines has secured its spot in the top thirty countries worldwide with the highest number of recorded COVID-19 cases.
Thus, it’s only logical for one to ask: What has been the government doing wrong? Truth be told, the answers here are quite obvious.
To start it off, instead of letting health experts guide the people in combating the virus, the government still chooses to rely heavily on the military police, and other officials to lead the planning against Covid-19, even up to date.
As known, several of the main agencies handling the virus are still headed by military officials. The National Task Force against COVID-19 is currently led by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana. Retired Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) general Carlito Galvez Jr heads the Philippines’ Declared National Policy Against COVID-19. While, the Interior Secretary Eduardo Año is assigned as the vice chairperson of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Admittedly, these people are highly educated, and their background on crisis management are helpful in ensuring the implementations of the protocols. However, they do not have enough public health experience nor in depth understanding of the medical practice and information.
This in turn would give them a hard time in giving response plans that are based on the recent World Health Organization’s understanding of the characteristics of the virus. Likewise, medical experts are less prone to give wrong information about the virus as they relatively have more understanding on how it works; thus, producing more accurate, useful guidance that can help save lives.
To add to that, the government has mostly depended on the imposed lockdowns without providing detailed plans on how to deal with the Coronavirus. Medical experts even warned that lockdown measures alone would not be enough to defeat the outbreak in the country, and yet the government still fails to solidify their actions.
As of August, an article written by Business Inquirer states that, “the delayed mass testing and dodgy contact tracing has failed in containing the spread of the coronavirus.” This is proven by the plea of our countrymen, especially Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), over their prolonged confinement due to delayed Covid-19 test results.
Instead of waiting out on the lockdown, Dr. Jose Santiago, president of the Philippine Medical Association, voiced that the government should to refine the pandemic control strategies, addressing the following urgent conditions: hospital workforce efficiency, failure of case finding and isolation, failure of contact tracing and quarantine, transportation safety, workplace safety, public compliance with self-protection, social amelioration.”
Dr. Anthony Leachon, former special adviser to the National Task Force Against COVID-19, also mentioned other importance of conducting mass testing. He added that mass testing would require less budget than lockdowns.
Leachen explained that according to the Department of Finance, over only eight billion pesos could be spent for the testing of ten million people. This is relatively cheaper compared to the eighteen billion pesos that the country would spend while imposing lockdowns.
Lastly, the country has started to ease restrictions on lockdowns despite the continuous rise in the number of cases being recorded. According to an article by Rappler, countries, like the Philippines, who are considered to be early “reopeners” have been known to experience higher numbers of cases, since there is an increase in people's mobility causing less scope for voluntary distancing.
Indonesia have also done the same, and yet they are now one of the Southeast Asian Countries with the highest number of infections.
Thus, what the Philippines needs are comprehensive testing, rigid contact tracing, and to finally give the work to those who are deemed experts on the medical field. If these necessary measures are not addressed and given attention, the country would just continue to suffer due to the COVID-19 pandemic. #