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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Manageable’

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"Try saying that to the people who have lost loved ones, whose meager savings have been eroded by medical bills, or who do not know where to get their next meal."

 

We take exception to the statement of a Department of Health official who said that the surge in the number of cases in various areas across the country is manageable. 

Heath Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega made this statement during a TV/ radio interview when asked about the number of new cases of COVID-19 that refuses to go down despite the on-and-off lockdowns over more than a year. 

Infections have continued to rise on Western Visayas, Negros Oriental, Dumaguete and Northern, Western and Southern Mindanao. Mindanao cases alone accounted for one fourth of the total number of fresh cases. The presence of variants of concern has been documented in all regions. 

Vega, however, emphasized that minimum health standards must be observed because local cases begin to rise as soon as there is a breach of compliance with basic protocol. He also said that the vaccination rollout has to be ramped up. 

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“Manageable” is not a word we’d like to use when we imagine hospitals in the province getting overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and when the lack of medical professionals there seriously compromise the ability of local governments to cope with this latest surge. 

“Manageable,” too, is not the word we have in mind when we imagine how many Filipinos still have to be convinced they must get themselves vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as one is available in their LGU for their specific group. As of Sunday, some 4 million Filipinos have had their first dose and 1.2 million have been fully vaccinated. That the vaccines are coming in trickles is not cause for confidence. Herd immunity is a long way off.

In all these, it is not at all encouraging to hear news about politicians preparing for battle—not against the pandemic but against their would-be opponents in next year’s polls. Soon, the filing of the certificates of candidacy and the campaign period will be upon us. How can we tell if the good moves we would see arise from the officials’ earnest efforts to do their job or to boost their—or their handpicked successors’—stock for the polls? The lines are getting blurred.

Meanwhile, there continue to be families who lose loved ones, whose finances are bled dry by their medical bills, who have lost their jobs and who do not know where to get their next meal. 

This has gone on for too long, and we believe it is apparent that we have not been managing well since Day One. Our crisis managers need to start working with better words—if they put the right labels and characterizations on situations, they would be in a better place to tell it like it is, squarely and logically look at the problem, and address it accordingly. 

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