AFTER spending P353 billion, has the government slowed down the COVID-19 spread? Have we flattened the curve? Is there a way for us to get a better sense of how w’’re going to achieve what we set out to do?
Senate Bill 1654 or the “Bayanihan to Recover as One Act” aims to provide the President the necessary powers to implement the national response on the COVID-19 pandemic for an additional three months. It also seeks to provide mechanisms for economic recovery.
But there are concerns about the last three months; we have yet to achieve the targets in terms of mass testing and yet we’ve had one of the longest if not the longest lockdowns.
Some are saying that our approach was too militaristic in nature rather than public health- oriented. We are concerned. We are now on our fourth month, do we have enough testing kits? What is the buffer stock of testing kits for our government facilities?
And why can Red Cross release its test results faster than the Department of Health’s (DOH)? The issue of backlog/late data on result, obviously will lead to poor contact tracing and to the inability or failure to isolate high-risk people.
There is also the slow accreditation of testing laboratories. Government accredited 30 percent of those that applied two months ago, slightly increasing to 38 percent now. While the Philippines has 49 accredited laboratories with 81 pending, Vietnam has 112 and South Korea has 500 testing centers. This gives us a sense of where we are and where they are in terms of managing the spread of the disease.
By the way, health frontliners have died without receiving the benefits specified in the Bayanihan Law due to the absence of the Implementing Rules and Regulations. This is truly disappointing and indicative of the lack of compassion at DOH. This is unacceptable and unforgivable. They have already died. They have already suffered. And we continue to allow their families to suffer more because of this failure and inaction on the part of the department.
The DOH leadership and bureaucracy must act with a sense of urgency as the situation is emergency in nature. The bureaucracy, at some point, will have to give way to the emergency rather than the emergency adjusting to the bureaucracy.
