WE NEED widespread COVID-19 testing for workers and employees returning to work; teachers and students resuming face-to-face instruction. The cost should be shouldered by government. This was the overwhelming expectation of the public after President Duterte was granted emergency powers, including unprecedented control over the 2019 and 2020 national budgets. It is appalling that, after two months of lockdown, this administration does not even recognise and accept its obligation to implement widespread testing.
Citizens sacrificed a lot just to do their part in addressing the situation by staying in their homes with the expectation that the government will maximize the time to scale up testing, contact tracing, and treatment, yet sadly the government has indicated it does not intend to conduct widespread testing.
For Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque to now tell us that it’s up to the private sector to carry out COVID testing is simply unacceptable. His pronouncement is in line with a Department of Labor and Employment advisory requiring all employers, contractors and subcontractors to “shoulder the cost of COVID-19 prevention and control measures”, including testing, disinfection of work sites, and provision of personal protective equipment. Secretary Silvestre Bello, for his part, urged private business owners to “dig deeper into their vast reserve of charity and benevolence.” Malacañang is washing its hands of any responsibility for funding and implementing a widespread testing plan that will allow workplaces and schools to resume operations under a so-called new normal. It seems to be blind to the reality that the private sector does not only consist of the big conglomerates that can afford “charity and benevolence” when it comes to implementing necessary measures to ensure the safety of their employees and the public as they restart their businesses during this pandemic. The private sector is mostly composed of micro, small, and medium enterprises, or around 887,200 out of more than one million businesses in the country, according to 2018 data. These MSMEs are barely keeping afloat due to the government-mandated lockdown. Asking them to shoulder the cost of mass testing along with other health-related measures will surely be the last nail in the coffin for many of them.
Nothing could be worse than our very own government not recognizing expanded and systematic COVID testing and aggressive contact tracing as key strategies to contain and eradicate the virus. The government consciously chooses to be blind to the fact that extended or modified, or whatever type of community quarantine is futile without the two.
