"We cannot let a good crisis go to waste. "
"We cannot let a good crisis go to waste. "
However bleak the prospects are, we are all certain that this coronavirus crisis shall come to pass. The critical question to be asked is how, and not when, this pandemic will end.
This is an important matter to consider because as previous epidemics have taught us, other than building individual immunity, an important key to overcoming the virus is ensuring adaptability and resilience. The hard truth is, we may never be back to the old familiar ways of everyday life. But the sooner we are able to keep a lifestyle that prevents the continued transmission of the virus, such as by observing minimum health precautions, the sooner we are able to get to a new normal way of doing things.
The concept of a “new normal” interestingly is not new. When supertyphoon Yolanda struck the country seven years ago, the “new normal” became the benchmark for building forward better. Thus, it became strongly linked with disaster resilience, and our society’s collective capacity for adaptability.
It is unfortunate, however, that the Senate continues to tarry on the long-awaited passage of the bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience. The establishment of a focused disaster management agency could have significantly beefed up our country’s capacity to deal with this emergency from a disaster risk reduction perspective, and speed up the implementation of more durable solutions to this crisis.
While the proposed DDR bill approved on third reading by the House of Representatives specifies that the new department will focus exclusively on natural disasters, it includes a standby provision that contemplates a complementary role for the Department of Disaster Resilience in responding to man-made disasters. Not only will its trained manpower effectively help on-the-ground incidence management, but the institutional knowledge that came with dealing with this crisis would have more importantly increased our ability to prepare for the next pandemic.
An important feature, for example, of the proposed DDR is unity of command. Admittedly, much of the challenges in our country’s COVID-19 response is brought about by a fragmented institutional arrangement, with several “czars” responsible for the different aspects of the response who need to work in close coordination with each other. But with COVID-19 being the seemingly insurmountable crisis that it is, effective coordination among the different “czars” as well as other frontline national government agencies turned out to be easier said than done.
Unity of command is also critical in ensuring coordination between the national and local levels of government. The current institutional set-up under the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) as well as its counterparts at the regional, provincial and municipal levels appears to mimic the existing National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). Here, authority is shared, responsibility is dispersed and resources are scattered, making it difficult to operate an appropriate and immediate response, thus delaying critical COVID-19 efforts.
Having a single focal agency responsible for the COVID-19 response and for cursory risk assessment, a role that could have easily been filled in by the proposed DDR, would help streamline and synchronize government action at both national and local levels. With its improved institutional capacity for disaster resilience, including incidence management in emergency situations, the DDR could have helped reduce the health vulnerabilities that many of our communities are currently exposed to, improve the local knowledge in controlling the spread of the infection as well as building resilience against the disease.
With the DDR in place, resolving the disconnect between national and local policy could have been avoided, especially in maintaining a functional healthcare system, guaranteeing the continued delivery of social services, preserving businesses and jobs and more importantly in maintaining social stability and offsetting any long-term adverse consequences. It would have avoided the heavy dependence on tabletop exercises and scenario building, and instead provide the needed technical experience and know-how resulting actual response efforts on the ground. Having DDR offices organized at the regional, provincial and municipal level would have been possible to easily avoid competing bureaucratic “silos” responsible for each aspect and level of our COVID-19 response and balance our social and economic priorities with adopting quarantine restrictions and ensuring provision of essential services with greater agility and innovation.
It is important to note that an effective strategy to address the COVID-19 pandemic depends significantly on how we are able to build a responsive institutional fit, such as the DDR. Although emergency situations may differ in nature and extent, there are management procedures that are applicable to all, which will help skip the learning curve in rolling out an already available response system rather than be impeded by many “unknown unknowns” in dealing with an emergency situation.
While in most cases, governments around the world have dealt with the crisis on the go, having an agency that is already responsible for emergency coordination and management, and for integrating scientific and technical advice into the decision-making processes, including ensuring an effective and coherent communication to the public, would have made a lot of difference.
As it is often said, we cannot let a good crisis come to waste. Twice in our nation’s history have we revealed our ill-preparedness for large-scale emergencies. Reducing the risks and vulnerabilities that increase the transmission of the disease such as in high population density settings, or the application of physical distancing measures in evacuation centers could improve the way we deal with similar emergencies in the future. Much of the burden brought about by this fight against COVID-19 upon our health system and on society at large could have been best resolved by risk-informed planning, deploying the best response system and building community resilience on the go.
This coronavirus crisis may not be the last pandemic in our lifetime, and it would be very important that how we address COVID-19 will help bring more focused and in-depth attention and knowledge in the way we understand, prepare and respond to future pandemics.