By Bernadette D. Nicolas & Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco
PRESIDENT Duterte was to meet with key Cabinet members on Sunday to tackle the medical community’s plea to place Mega Manila under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for two weeks and provide respite for exhausted health-care workers as Covid-19 cases keep rising.
Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque confirmed this a day after Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea met with some Cabinet members to also discuss the frontliners’ concerns.
Dozens of organizations representing health workers across all fields, led by the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP), said that after five months and with many health workers being infected along with their families, it is impossible to simply expand the Covid-19 care capacities of hospitals because besides the physical requirements, these institutions are hounded by crippling manpower shortages.
“The President will meet with key Cabinet members today [Sunday] to discuss yesterday’s letter from the frontliners. I will make the proper announcement in due course,” Roque said in a statement.
Before Saturday’s meeting convened by Medialdea, the Palace said Health Secretary Francisco Duque, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, Roque, National Task Force (NTF) Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez Jr., Deputy Chief Implementer of the NTF Vince Dizon, met with the Philippine Medical Association, the Philippine Nurses Association, and the Philippine Association of Medical Technologists to discuss their August 1 letter.
The medical community proposed that Mega Manila—NCR, Central Luzon and Calabarzon—be placed under ECQ from August 1 to 15, to provide a “timeout” to refine pandemic control strategies and address urgent problems.
Among the problems they raised are hospital workforce shortages, failure of case finding and isolation, failure of contact tracing and quarantine, transportation safety, workplace safety, public compliance with self-protection and social amelioration.
The medical community made the appeal a day after the government kept the National Capital Region under general community quarantine (GCQ). Along with NCR, 12 other areas in the country are under GCQ.
On Sunday, infections breached the 100,000 mark after the government reported new 5,032 cases—another record-high increase.
Labor groups
Several labor groups also backed on Sunday the stand of the medical community. “They are the experts and frontliners that our country cannot afford to lose in this war against Covid-19. Their exhaustion is our concern. Their lives are as important as the many lives they save. And as essential workers and experts in the medical field, their opinion outweighs that of others as far as restrategizing the country’s pandemic approach is concerned,” Nagkaisa Labor Coalition said in a statement.
For its part, Kilusang Mayo Uno Chairman Elmer Labog said medical and scientific experts should instead be the ones to lead the Covid-19 Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), as it claimed the decisions and pronouncements of the current IATF are “baseless and unscientific.”
New logs
As of 4 p.m. of August 2 the DOH said that Covid-19 cases jumped to 103,185 after recording 2,114 fresh cases and detected 2,918 late cases.
The DOH also recorded 301 more recoveries, bringing the total number of recoveries to 65,557.
Twenty deaths were posted, bringing the total to 2,059.
‘We hear you’—DOH
The Department of Health (DOH) assured the medical professionals they are working closely with the Office of the President and other government institutions on the appeal for a “timeout.”
DOH said the “timeout” will also give the government leeway to revisit their strategies “to meet the evolving nature of the pandemic.”
At the same time, the DOH said, “this reprieve can also give us the critical space to marshall resources that will help us win this fight.” Duque said the past five months have taken their toll on the whole country, most especially health-care workers.
“In response to your call, we commit to do more to ‘care for our carers’ with detailed plans for support—from easier actions such as facilitating lodging, transportation, PPE, and food—to pushing for more systematic reforms on compensation and benefits, including necessary network-based changes to health-care practice,” Duque said.
“We hear you,” Duque said after he met with the medical groups on Saturday afternoon.
Localized lockdowns likely
The DOH as the lead of the Task Group on Response Operations, he vowed, will work with the National Task Force (NTF) in effectively implementing localized lockdowns, and ensure that the national government will provide comprehensive support.
“We will revisit and include the inputs we have gathered in our overall gameplan. The DOH will develop this strategy in coordination with our government and nongovernment counterparts in the next seven days,” he added.
The letter to Duterte signed August 1 by Dr. Mario Panaligan, president of the Philippine College of Physicians, said, “We are waging a losing battle against Covid-19, and we need to draw up a consolidated, cognitive plan of action. Hence, we, as your healthcare frontliners call on our national government to return Mega Manila to enhanced community quarantine for a period of two weeks, from August 1 to 15.”
“Our health-care workers should not bear the burden of deciding who lives and who dies. If the health system collapses, it is ultimately the poor that is most affected,” the group lamented.
Image credits: Simeon Celi Jr./ Malacañang Presidential Photographers Division via AP
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