After dismissing Covid-19 as something that would simply go away, President Duterte sought and got from Congress additional powers intended to contain the spread of the virus.
Congress now allows Duterte to juggle government funds and assets to fund critical programs through the length of the national emergency. Were these extra powers absolute? As they are written, the special powers do not speak of a state of emergency, but more of a monetary management to me.
The final version, authored by the Senate and later adopted by the Lower House, bypasses the necessity for a bicameral conference in dealing with the pandemic. But what really strikes me as laudable (if followed to the letter), aside from the financial assistance to be given to the public under the order, is the retroactive cash compensation of P100,000 to public and private on-duty health workers who may be severely infected by Covid-19, and P1 million to public and private health workers who may die fighting the pandemic. The order also seeks to engage volunteer health workers who will be compensated, exclusive of hazard pay.
Financial compensation may never be enough to console our health workers’ bereaved loved ones, but it somehow makes up for the snub they initially got from Duterte who, in a public announcement, chose instead to lavish Sen. Bong Go and China with high praises when the government first imposed community quarantine in Metro Manila.
“If things deteriorate, I may have to call on China to help,” Duterte even said then. It was a total letdown for the Filipino people who to this day remain anxious about how the government will lead them in fighting Covid-19. Instead, Duterte recklessly dismissed the possibility of an outbreak and delayed action on stemming the outbreak, which has now morphed into a pandemic that is turning the world upside down.
Reports spiral day by day of health workers being quarantined, doctors dying, and hospitals no longer admitting Covid-19 patients because they have been operating beyond their maximum capacity.
Why? If you’re a person under investigation, the existing protocol is that your condition has to be evaluated. But with the lack of Covid-19 testing kits, you’d be forced to undergo a 14-day quarantine. Likewise, the medical team that evaluates you has also to be quarantined for two weeks until they are cleared. What does this mean? Frontliners have to leave their respective posts for 14 long days for each of the PUI they evaluate. You can just imagine the stress this has placed on the country’s health system. The already limited number of health workers doing patient rounds would be further thinned out. Health experts whom I’ve talked with said that, ideally, Covid-19 testing should be immediately done on PUIs so they could be sent home if found negative, thus easing the pressure on our overburdened health workers and keeping them at their post.
At the root of the problem is the lack of vigorous Covid-19 testing done in our country, unlike what South Korea and Singapore have been doing. The Department of Health (DOH) blames the scarcity of testing kits (which House Speaker Peter Cayetano dismissed as fake news), but says that this is now being resolved. I really hope so.
While our frontliners have been deprived of Covid-19 testing, entitled government officials and politicians get themselves tested even if they don’t exhibit any signs or symptoms of the virus infection. What’s infuriating is their gall to be home-tested, along with their family members (while PUIs wait in long, hellish queues in medical facilities before being attended to). The samples from these elected, appointed or ersatz government officials—and their household members—are then marked “VIP” when sent to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) for evaluation. I directly blame these heartless, mindless, soulless politicians for putting their own interests above the people they have been sworn to serve. They have obviously contributed to the scarcity of Covid-19 testing kits and, to an extent, the spread of the virus itself.
Over the past two weeks, we have suffered the loss of some of our country’s brilliant doctors, and the closing of the doors of some private hospitals to Covid-19 patients. I just hope the emergency powers granted to President Duterte would truly be used to finally slow down, if not completely, halt the pandemic. Otherwise, all of us should gear up for the possibility that we would have very few healthcare professionals left to administer to the nation.
It is simply criminal. Frontliners still continue to do their sworn duties even if they have been coerced to put their own safety on the line by those who comfortably lounge in their blinkered nests. As the possibility of an upward curb stares at the entire world, other countries are bracing for the virus onslaught by directing scarce resources where they are needed the most to save the lives of their people.
In the US, top priority goes “to those who have been hospitalized, along with health-care workers, symptomatic residents of long-term care facilities, and people over 65— especially those with heart and lung disease, which place them at higher risk.” According to Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “Not every single person in the US needs to get tested. When you go in and get tested, you are consuming personal protective equipment, masks and gowns—those are high priority for the health-care workers who are taking care of people who have coronavirus disease.”
“In a universe where masks and gowns are starting to become scarce,” warned Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for the Division of Disease Control of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, “every time we test someone who doesn’t need one, we’re taking that mask and gown away from someone in the intensive care unit.”
In the Philippines, Cayetano still denies that there is a shortage of testing kits and personal protective equipment.
“Reprehensible” is too light a word to use. When your mayor crows on social media and posts pictures of endless food on the table on her birthday—at the height of the pandemic that requires everyone to stay home—she basically filches N95 masks from the nurses in her city. Each time your representative makes an appeal to people to stay home and scrimp while he sits on a bagful of his pork barrel, he fleeces the ICU staff in your province of countless ventilators.
We shouldn’t have come to this, if only our leaders had acted decisively early on to contain the virus. I just hope that the extra powers given to President Duterte would be used judiciously and expeditiously, before he runs out of time to do what is right.
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com