"If an EQC for 15 days can give us that needed “breathing space,” so be it."
"If an EQC for 15 days can give us that needed “breathing space,” so be it."
What’s happening? What’s going on? Did we miss out on something? The basics? Now, our very own health workers are urging us to go back to square one. One hundred sixty four days after the imposition of ECQ nationwide and its subsequent easing up in most parts including the Mega Manila area (NCR, Regions 3 and 4-A), some 40 medical associations have petitioned President Duterte to reimpose the same for another fifteen days to “give time to the health system, specially the health workers, to breathe and recover from the stresses associated with front line work.” They are calling for timeout.
That this plea comes after we were supposed to be on the move with assurances from our COVID-19 response officials that the preparations and protocols are in place specially in the twin epicenters, Mega Manila and Cebu City, is truly disheartening. To think that the announcement before this shocker was issued was we have successfully arrested the virus transmission and are set for more easing up nationwide. A friend of mine was just about to go to his barber for a total package, as he called it, with haircut, nails and even back massage last Saturday, the first day that a number of contact businesses such as parlors and gyms were supposed to have been green lighted for operations was so disappointed. He texted me: what gives? What’s this plea all about?
Well, it’s clear our health workers do not share the assessment much more the optimism of the IATF and their principal government partner, the Department of Health. In their letter to President Duterte, the 40 medical societies said that the health care system has been overwhelmed, with hospitals temporarily closing to decongest and health workers falling ill as COVID-19 cases in the country surged under eased lockdown measures.
In calling for a return to ECQ for at least two weeks from August 1 to 15, they cited the need to give “our exhausted health workers breathing space” after having served in the frontlines for more than four months of “a pandemic that has seen no letup.”
They pointed out that “we’re waging a losing battle against COVID-19” and said that “we need to draw up a consolidated, definitive plan of action,” which in their view the proposed two-week respite can
at the very least provide to a level of reasonable readiness.
So, does that mean we have merely been cruising all along? That we have been less than thorough, unbalanced and impractical with the issued guidelines not to mention faulty if not unimaginative in our plan implementation? Have we been complacent? Have we allowed politics, prejudices and personal interest get the better of us? Have we allowed tokenism to rule over proper, responsible and responsive governance? Have we been blinded, buoyed as we were by the play-of-data and play-of-words handed out by our officials who should know better than put peoples lives at risk? In a word, have we taken the public interest, the general welfare, as it were, for granted and set aside the seriousness of our situation with a shrug of the shoulder? Or, worse, a quip or a joke every so often? It would appear so if we go by the record.
Instead of flattening the curve, as the scientists so often remind us, we have seen an uninterrupted spike in cases specially in Mega Manila and Cebu City. We have also been seeing cases in places which heretofore never had any with the easing up of travel from the epicenters to various areas especially with the LSI movements. And, of course, the continued repatriation of OFWs and other travelers as global travel eased up as well. So even as the spikes continued uninterrupted, our officials have tried to console our people not to worry attributing the rise in numbers to our increased testing capacity and contact tracing thoroughness. Which may or may not be so as we have been getting horror stories of faulty test results and “ghost contacts.” The associations’ letter cited a potential collapse of the health care system, with more COVID-19 patients being admitted into packed hospitals, while health facilities are understaffed as medical workers have also contracted the disease
The recitations are really disheartening specially the DoH’s unexplained inability to augment our pool of health workers despite the funding which has been allocated for such a critical undertaking months back. The hiring of such personnel was one of the first instructions issued by President Duterte upon the imposition of ECQ for which billions of pesos were allocated. What happened to that guidance? Have we hired enough trained personnel to man the ramparts of our COVID-19 defense plan? Where are these people? Have we been taking care of them? Do we need more as the cases spike? We need answers. Now. What about the equipments for both public and private hospitals like PPEs, masks, medicines, disinfectants, etc?
Do we have enough of the most basic requirements in store? Have we lined up future purchases as it seems clear, despite continuing assurances, that the vaccine or cure for this pandemic is still way off the horizon? That unlike the common cold or the flu which are seasonal we have to learn to live with this virus for sometime. If that be the case are we prepared for it? These and other concerns are top of the mind of the medical associations when they issued that letter to President Duterte.
“We propose,” the petition read “that the ECQ be used as a timeout to refine our pandemic control strategies addressing the following urgent conditions or problems: hospital workforce efficiency; failure of contact tracing and quarantine; transportation safety; workplace safety; public compliance with self-protection; social amelioration.”
The associations’ assessment of our situation is a direct rebuke of all the assurances which we have been getting from the authorities for months. Even if just two or there of these are right on target it should be more than enough to let us pause and really, comprehensively and responsibly take stock of our situation. If an EQC for 15 days can give us that needed “breathing space,” so be it. If the problems are limited to certain areas or facets of the program which can be addressed on a targeted basis then that should be looked into as well.
After all, there was already a submission last May to the WHO and our other partners of a revised response plan, a moving forward one after our first 100 days of quarantine which took into consideration all of the concerns mentioned by the associations. It seems to me the problem boils down to implementation all over again – the same issue we mentioned at the start of our lockdowns.
That plan meant to adjust public health and social measures in the context of COVID-19 and which the WHO agreed and even strongly recommended to be undertaken partook of the following requirements which the UN body noted must be in place:
COVID-19 transmission is controlled through two complementary approaches – breaking chains of transmission by detecting, isolating, testing and treating cases and quarantining contacts and monitoring hot spots of disease circulation:
Sufficient public health workforce and health system capacities are in place;
Outbreak risks in high-vulnerability settings are minimized;
Preventive measures are established in workplaces;
Capacity to manage the risk of exporting and importing cases from communities with high risks of transmission; and
Communities are fully engaged.
Need we say more?
