Covid-19 has become truly pandemic, spreading in all the five continents of the world. As a result, governments everywhere have been scrambling on how to craft appropriate medical, organizational and financial measures needed to slow down and contain the advance of the “invisible enemy.”
In this regard, the country that gave the world Covid-19 is now cited as the model in arresting the spread of the dreaded virus. In military-style fashion, the Communist Party of China locked down virtually the whole of China in the first quarter of 2020. The 57-million population of Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic, were also subjected to strict quarantine procedures and kept in isolation from the rest of the country.
In February, China was the focus of international aid coming from different countries, including those mobilized by the World Health Organization. Today, the situation has been reversed. China has been organizing medical missions and sending medical kits to the heavily afflicted countries such as Italy and Spain and to its neighboring countries such as Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand. China’s sin of omission—the failure to communicate to the world for nearly two months (December 2019-January 2020) the emergence of a virulent and contagious virus from Wuhan—is now relegated to the background by the numerous debates around the world on how governments should manage the medical and ensuing social and economic challenges of a pandemic with no clear cure in sight.
Policy-makers in many countries are even divided on what to do. The United States, riven by Republican-Democratic political intramurals and federal-state jurisdictional issues, is a prime example of a country that cannot get its act together on how to arrest Covid-19. As of March 24, the US recorded a total of 33,400 Covid positives and 400 fatalities. The WHO even warned that the US might even become the next epicenter of the global pandemic.
However, in the Philippines and in many countries around the world, the common response is simply to emulate China—that is, lockdown whole areas of a country where there is an outbreak or any indication of Covid transmission, and then put in place testing, quarantine, treatment, tracing and monitoring mechanisms and facilities, supplemented by endless medical advisories on symptom detection, social distancing, hand washing and observance of good hygiene. Then wait for the epidemic to “flatten” and fade, just like what happened in Wuhan.
Containing the virus is, of course, not that simple, as outlined above. The reality is that a lockdown triggers social and economic problems that do not only subvert success in the implementation of the containment strategy but also add new and equally difficult challenges on other fronts. Foremost among these is the massive job and income displacement that naturally arises from a virtual stoppage of work and commerce. A lockdown is a strike against the economy and the working people.
In the Luzon lockdown, the plight of the following workers immediately became visible to the mass media—the informal self-employed (vendors, freelancers, micro entrepreneurs, waste pickers, tricycle-jeepney-taxi drivers, etc.), informal wage workers (viajeros, construction workers, etc.) and the “endo” workers in the formal private sector and the “job order” workers in the government. These informals and non-regular paid workers constitute the overwhelming majority of the labor market. They cannot afford prolonged idleness. No work-no pay means no food-no life for their impoverished families. They can easily be found: in the slum colonies snaking around the archipelago, and in the various tenement and public housing projects of the government.
It is now abundantly clear that a lockdown will not work if it is not accompanied by a comprehensive program of social protection for the many, including those in the middle-level income range such as those operating small and medium enterprises. Social protection means insurance against hunger, homelessness, illness and non-enjoyment of basic necessities in life. The problem is that the informals and the precariat (endos and job-order workers) do not have such insurance. Many are not even enrolled in the SSS and GSIS, both of which are focused mainly in providing limited pension benefits to registered members, not long-term unemployment insurance in a lockdown situation.
It is against this background that we welcome the decision of the new generation of Metro Manila mayors and other LGUs to prepare food packs for the poor and near-poor families. But can they do this for three to four weeks? And if the lockdown is extended by another month or so, can the new “Heal as One” budgetary program of Malacañang be able to support around two-thirds of the 110 million Filipinos (meaning those who constitute the poor and near-poor in society)?
This is why we also support the courageous decision of Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto to allow tricycle drivers to ply the streets while maintaining the needed social distance in order to enable the poor some space to earn, move goods and procure basic necessities. We also say yes when he negotiated with motel operators to convert some of the motels as quarantine facilities.
We also welcome the initiative of Marikina Mayor Marcelino Teodoro to set up a Covid testing center that will provide early detection of the disease to the City’s constituents—for free. Mayor Teodoro’s decision obviously arose out of his anxiety over the prolonged process by which those infected by Covid are being tested given the inadequacies of the Philippine health infrastructures. The queue in RITM in Muntinlupa and other DOH-designated Covid facilities is long, and the results from the testing also takes time, about a week or longer. Which is the reason why DOH itself has taken the decision to allow patients with “mild” symptoms to go on self-isolation at home. Under these circumstances, one can imagine how many among the poor suffering from Covid symptoms have the energy to still go to DOH facilities and have themselves tested and treated.
The Korean model: Massive testing, open communication, participation of the health workers.
This brings us then to the success of South Korea in managing the Covid epidemic. South Korea is now hailed as a model in managing the epidemic.
South Korea was the first country outside China to be hit by the coronavirus, beginning January. It also experienced a sudden surge of infections, partly because of a community-wide transmission in a Korean Church group. And yet, South Korea’s number of fatalities is considered the lowest, 0.7 percent out of the total infected, compared to the 3 percent to 4 percent fatality rate in other countries per WHO study. After reaching over 8,000 confirmed cases, the number of infected is now on a decline.
What accounts for the Korean success to contain the epidemic when, in contrast to China, the government did not adopt a paralyzing country-wide lockdown? Two explanations are reported in the local mass media: immediate decisive action by the Korean government (minimal time lag) and massive testing of those exhibiting symptoms, as many as 15,000 a day, and putting in isolation those with severe cases.
What the local mass media failed to report are the following:
1) Restrengthening of Korea’s public health system even before the Covid outbreak. This restrengthening was a response of the Labor government to the failure of previous governments to handle similar epidemics in the past, in particular the SARS and MERS epidemics. One weakness by past governments is the failure to keep the public “fully informed” through a program of openness and transparency.
2) The partnership between government and concerned stakeholders or publics in society in addressing the epidemic. For example, the development of the needed test kits, in massive number, was done on the prodding of the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine and CSOs such as the People’s Health Movement. Of course, the strong industrial base of Korea enabled the country to meet targets in a short turnaround time. Said PHM: “The acclaimed Korean test system is not the fruits of laissez-faire innovative capitalism and deregulation but an excellent example of tight coordination of public-private partnership and publicization of innovative technology.”
The “private” in the PPP includes the CSOs and academics.
3) The partnership has been strengthened by the full support given by the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union, an affiliate of the radical Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, to the government’s program to contain the spread of the virus. The KHMU president has been meeting daily with his officers, who have been assigned tasks in different hospitals to look after the situation of health workers and engage concerned agencies in the better delivery of health services. Many health-care members of KHMU have also become volunteers in “hot spots” or areas with high concentration of infections.
4) The program of testing and treatment of Korea has been inclusive. It covers the migrant workers, including the undocumented.
What is the lesson from the Korean Covid story? More can be achieved in combating Covid by enlisting the active support of the people to the containment program, not only in words but in creative partnership arrangements.