I was pleasantly surprised last week that the call by the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex) for “Congress to realign the unspent and unobligated appropriations already embodied in the General Appropriations Acts (GAA) as emergency calamity appropriations and to augment such funds in the budget with those of government-owned and -controlled corporations for the same purpose” had already been passed.
A House Bill 6616, which was amended by Senate Bill 1418 was passed on March 23 authorizing President Duterte to allocate such funds necessary in order to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) problem. However, the emergency powers to give authority to the President “to temporarily take over privately-owned public utilities and businesses,” which is the subject of much controversy, was removed.
This is an extremely difficult crisis we are facing since the country has to address so many concerns while the Covid-19 cases are rising and so are the deaths. We need those funds to procure more testing kits, to establish more testing laboratories, cover the cost of treatment for the victims and other related measures.
It is so heartbreaking to read a story by a nurse who witness the death of a patient who was considered a Covid-19 patient even before the test results arrives. They have to wait until the results comes before they can suction since the patient had profound secretions and a normal suction would turn the droplets into aerosol which can prove very risky for the health workers attending. So she was left drowning in her own secretions.
And since the protocol for suspected Covid-19 patients is to do monitoring every four hours only (and wear personal protective equipment or PPE), the patient died alone. The results arrived only a week after and it shows “Negative.” That means the health workers could have performed the normal routine and save the life of the patient had the results been known at a sooner time.
There are so many similar stories recounting the deaths not only of patients but also of health workers attending to them and it can be depressing due to lack of testing kits and the turnaround time to know the results.
Hopefully, with this measure taken by the government, more testing kits will be made available, more laboratories to perform the testing, more hospitals and places to accommodate the patients, more PPEs and health care treatments not only for those who were tested positive but also those who are suffering from similar symptoms but are still PUIs (persons under investigation) or PUMs (persons under monitoring). Hazard pay should also be given to the health workers for they are not only risking their lives to save other people but also the lives of their families.
We also need subsidies for the poor to tide them over during the crisis since the private sector is also suffering from financial difficulties. With the available funds, they can trust the government to address their needs. The private sector can only help to a certain extent because they are also reeling from the financial effects of this crisis.
There are P275 billion off-budget funds on top of the funds from the 2020 GAA that can also be used to address Covid-19 according to Deputy Speaker Luis Raymund F. Villafuerte who sponsored the measure. If these funds are properly implemented, we can mitigate the risk if we cannot totally eradicate it yet.
As the World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference, we can change the trajectory of this pandemic instead of being helpless bystanders. Physical distancing, which can be a defensive measure is not enough but, in order to win, according to him, “we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics.”
With the measure to be implemented, this will enable us to have testing for many if not all suspected victims, proper treatment, isolation and care for confirmed cases and contract tracing and quarantine for close contacts, which are the steps the WHO would like every country to undertake in order not just to defend ourselves but to attack the virus. As of the present, there are not enough hospitals to treat the patients, many of our health workers are quarantined, no blood testing for most of the suspected victims.
In the US, the turnaround time for the results to be known is 45 minutes made by Cepheid, a biotechnology company and approved by FDA (source: theverge.com). Here in the Philippines as of the present, the average turnaround is a week or even a few more days. By the time the results are known, the patient is dead.
The testing kits should be made available to all walks of life and to all suspected victims. And it is not cheap to be admitted in a private hospital for Covid-19 victims, that is, if you are even lucky to be admitted. With the takeover of the hospitals and medical facilities by the government if needed, the cost of being admitted hopefully will be drastically brought down if not totally eliminated.
With the measures to be undertaken by the government plus private sector cooperation coupled with the discipline observed by the citizenry we can surely overcome the drastic negative effect of this pandemic.
Wilma Miranda is the Managing Partner of Inventor, Miranda & Associates, and CPAs, Board of Director Member of KPS Outsourcing Inc. and Treasurer of Negros Outsourcing Service Inc. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinion of these institutions and the BusinessMirror.