BY MATÉ ESPINA
THE WESTERN Visayas Regional Inter Agency Task Force, enjoined by the local government units (LGUs) here in Negros Occidental including Bacolod City, is defying the implementation of Resolution 101 by the national IATF.
Of course the regional IATF called it “holding in abeyance” pending clarifications sought by the LGUs but local interviews here speak otherwise as officials here want to maintain travel protocols that are working well to contain the pandemic.
Resolution 101 is supposedly a uniform travel protocol nationwide which will not make testing and quarantine for travels as mandatory.
However, it also states that while there is no more mandatory testing for travellers, request for testing will still be honored if the LGU will continue to make it a requirement. Negros Occidental and Bacolod said they will continue to enforce such.
Thus, while I’ve been aching to go to Manila to visit my son and siblings, going there poses no problem but coming back here requires so much documentation that it does not make it worth traveling.
But I have no problem with that and in fact, I laud that our LGUs are making a stand against that sweeping resolution because there is clear evidence that the strict travel protocols we enforced here have been helpful in containing the cases of COVID-19 in our communities.
Another portion of the resolution states that travellers shall not be quarantined anymore unless they exhibit symptoms upon arrival at their destination. Medical doctors and health frontliners will be deployed to airports to segregate those displaying symptoms to be quarantined.
Of course that’s quite a stupid proposition because we all know by now that a large percentage of those afflicted with the virus are asymptomatic, thus even medical doctors will not be able to detect them just by looking at them.
Health certificates may no longer be required as well for travellers which is not really necessary from the start because that piece of paper is still not proof that one is free of the virus. In fact that health certificate requirement was prone to abuse as there were cases here that an additional x-ray was needed to secure it.
That was fodder for investigation when a story came out that a health doctor here was allegedly part owner of the x-ray laboratory across a health facility.
APORs or authorized persons outside of residence from government agencies are also exempted from travel requirements. This to me is quite questionable since we’ve had cases of APORs here testing positive upon arrival.
Local authorities have been doing their best to contain the pandemic and this new resolution will jeopardize everything that they’ve put in place to ensure that their localities are safe. Besides, what is the support of the national government in case a new outbreak happens in our midst?
It is easy for the national IATF to mandate that clinical doctors be placed on all points of entry and exit when most frontliners are overworked manning hospitals. We have some doctors who are still afraid to open up by their clinics even for consultation.
When it comes to ports and terminals, they must have “sufficient quarantine/isolation facilities” and shall also have a referral system “wherein symptomatic travelers shall be transferred to quarantine facilities to enable the Bureau of Quarantine for airports, or local health officials for LGUs, to take over,” a report said. Ergo, it still falls on LGUs thus it is understandable for local officials here to defy the new rule.
There, too, is the StaySafe.ph System which must be utilized as the primary contact tracing system and all other contact tracing apps such as our BacTrac here, must be integrated in that system. This provision is welcoming so that travellers do not have to download our own app here which is part of local travel requirement.
But knowing how our BacTrac system crashed when it was first launched, with all those apps that other LGUs nationwide have implemented, I hope the StaySafe.ph system can withstand millions of information from the other apps. Plus, there is the question too of how safe will our information be under that system.
That was a question when the BacTrac was first introduced because there are no safety nets that your personal data will not be hacked. However, since the app was mandatory for everyone doing business with government and entering malls and other establishments, one has to sign-up for it.
The national IATF should not have meddled with what LGUs are implementing if it works for them. Until a vaccine is available and 70 percent of our population inoculated, we must not be complacent and support what is working for our respective communities.
Speaking of vaccines, Sinovac is already available while AstraZeneca is set to come in next week after some delays. I was listening to the interview of Dr. Chris Sorongon, a member of the Emergency Operations Center here who announced that first priority for Sinovac vaccines will be medical frontliners.
The big question though is, how many of them are willing to be inoculated with that when the FDA has initially announced that it may not be safe for this sector?/PN
