MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision on whether to grant medical professionals’ call for Mega Manila to revert to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) will be known today.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF-EID) is scheduled to meet with medical frontliners group on Monday to reconfigure existing strategies in dealing with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
“President Rodrigo Duterte has heard concerns of the medical community and the Chief Executive
directed the IATF-EID to act on these concerns immediately,” Roque said.
“Your voices have been heard. We cannot afford to let down our modern heroes. This is our commitment,” he added.
In a letter signed by 40 medical societies, it said that the health care system has been overwhelmed, with hospitals temporarily closing to decongest and health workers falling ill as COVID-19 cases in the country surged under eased lockdown measures.
The groups called for a return to ECQ for at least two weeks, from Aug. 1 to 15, to give exhausted health workers “breathing space” as they served in the frontlines of a pandemic that has seen no letup.
“We propose that the ECQ be used as a timeout to refine our pandemic control strategies addressing the following urgent conditions or problems: hospital workforce efficiency; failure of contact tracing and quarantine; transportation safety; workplace safety; public compliance with self-protection; social amelioration,” the letter read.
The letter cited a potential collapse of the health care system, with more COVID-19 patients being admitted into packed hospitals, while health facilities are understaffed as medical workers have also contracted the disease./PN
