About 38 percent of the Health department’s budget under Bayanihan 2 will be used to deploy healthcare professionals in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, an official said Saturday.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said “about 38 percent of the funds are for human resources for health.”
The Health department will get almost half or P53.48 billion Under Bayanihan 2, a stimulus package with a budget of P165 billion.
The department says the budget allocation will support healthcare workers. It will keep them protected while preventing the influx of patients into hospitals.
Department to study JAO report
The Justice department said Sunday it will first determine if it can believe the report by the so-called Joint Administrative Order group on COVID-19 about its probe on the alleged violations of quarantine protocols by the University of Santo Tomas men’s basketball team.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra says they will first study the report to determine if they have jurisdiction over it.
“We will wait for the report of the JAO team and determine if the [department] has any jurisdiction over the matters raised therein,” Guevarra said in a text message.
The JAO group is composed of the Philippine Sports Commission, the Department of Health, and the Games and Amusements Board joined by the Commission on Higher Education.
Province to regulate fees
City of San Fernando The high cost of swab tests has prompted Pampanga Gov. Dennis Pineda to call the attention of the Health department in a bid to make the medical procedures affordable.
Pineda said the department must regulate government and private laboratories over their swab test fees. It must set a price ceiling on the cost of Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction commonly used to detect coronavirus as prices have skyrocketed from P5,000 to as high as P10,000.
The laboratories doing RT-PCR tests, Pineda says, have different rates. The Jose B. Lingad Memorial General Hospital charges P3,485, the Philippine Red Cross P4,000 and the Green City Medical Center P6,500.