"We see a failure of leadership at the DOH, whose secretary also sits as chairman of PhilHealth."
The signs are everywhere. Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are far from achieving the much-vaunted “new normal” and there is no sense that we are heading in the right direction. We are experiencing pandemic fatigue.
The most disturbing sign, of course, is the constant rise in new cases, despite an 80-day lockdown—the longest in the world—and a return to stricter quarantine restrictions after a brief relaxation to get the economy going.
As of Sunday, the total number of infections since the pandemic began breached the 160,000 mark, with 3,420 new cases reported on that day. It is a sign of our creeping desperation that we are actually view this high number as positive—coming as it does after the 6,958 new cases recorded on Aug. 7.
Fatalities continue to rise as well, with 65 new deaths due to COVID-19 reported Sunday, bringing the total death toll to 2,665 to date.
Meanwhile, reports of 40,397 recoveries on Sunday, instead of being welcomed, were treated with skepticism despite the Department of Health’s explanation that these were patients who were deemed recovered even without a second test, after being quarantined and showing no symptoms of the disease 14 days after they first tested positive.
The DOH says such time-based assessments are accepted by the World Health Organization and local medical groups, many still look askance at the dramatic one-day improvement, and view it as a prelude to rationalize a relaxation once again of quarantine restrictions as the economy remains firmly rooted in a recession.
Amid the seemingly endless ebb and rise of new cases and deaths, it does not help when government officials try to compare us favorably with other countries that are struggling as well to contain the pandemic. We now have the most number of cases in Southeast Asia, and efforts by some officials to spin this as a result of more vigorous testing on our part versus other countries sounds almost Trumpian. Let’s call a spade a spade: the numbers are rising because of community spread and our inability to isolate and treat people who are spreading the coronavirus.
As if this were not enough, the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) is racked by allegations of widespread corruption, suggesting that untold billions of pesos that should go to the COVID-19 response are ending up in the wrong hands. Those allegations have a real-world impact on the COVID-19 response. Already, the Philippine Red Cross, which has invested heavily in building testing facilities, may have to suspend its COVID-19 testing as PhilHealth’s debt to the organization approaches a staggering P1 billion. The decision to suspend testing, we are certain, is not being done on a whim. Money is simply running out for new test kits and for salaries of the people who man the PRC test centers.
In all of this, we see a failure of leadership in the DOH, whose secretary also sits as the chairman of PhilHealth. There can now be no doubt that had the department moved more swiftly and decisively, we would not find ourselves at the losing end of the world’s longest COVID-19 quarantine, battling pandemic fatigue.