Believing that the worst is not over for the Philippines despite the community quarantine now being imposed in Metro Manila and in other parts of the country, a congressman said that COVID-19 Protocol and Monitoring Helpdesk and Testing Centers should be set up in all barangays.
Rep. Ronnie Ong of the Ang Probinsyano party-list group said the Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (ITFEID) should activate the centers as soon as possible to make monitoring of the spread of the China virus more accurate and provide time intervention for the victims wherever they are.
Ong said that while the spread of the virus, that originated from the military and science research center of Wuhan in Central China, had been minimized by the metro-wide CQ, it was expected that the number of those infected will continue to rise “so the best way to address this health crisis is to fortify the barangays from the COVID-19 threat through accessible testing and strict monitoring.”
“I don’t want to sound too pessimistic but until after we can actually find a cure to this COVID-19 virus, the worst is not over for us despite all the measures that are put in place. We have to prepare for a long and hard battle to defeat this disease and our main battleground will be our communities, specifically the barangays,” Ong, vice chairman of the House committee on rural development, said.
“If we can promptly detect the disease and isolate those infected at the barangay level, we would have a better chance to minimize the opportunity for this dreaded virus to spread further to other communities,” added Ong, also vice chairperson of the House committee on foreign affairs.
This developed as Deputy Speaker Luis Raymund Villafuerte said that Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque’s disclosure on the need for more testing kits for the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) amid an expected increase in local infections gives all the more reason for the Congress to hold a special session to augment the DOH’s budget for its acquisition of test kits as part of the containment and mitigation measures against the pandemic.
Villafuerte cited the urgency for the government to purchase more than enough COVID-19 testing kits after Duque conceded over the weekend that the DOH had “limited testing supplies” even as the number of infected persons and those they have had interacted would likely climb and require more diagnostic kits for health authorities to test them.
Earlier, Villafuerte proposed to President Duterte to convene a special session of the Congress, which is now on its March 13-May 3 Lenten recess, so it can legislate urgent measures to best equip the government in its battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Villafuerte said in a weekend statement that the first order of business for lawmakers in the proposed special session is the congressional approval of a supplemental budget of P10 billion to P15 billion for the purchase of more than enough kits to test not only patients with confirmed infections but also mildly symptomatic people and even those who are asymptomatic, or have not displayed any of the virus’ symptoms, but had been exposed to infected persons.
The congressman from Camarines Sur’s Second District, said the acquisition of cutting-edge testing kits like those in the Republic of Korea, where such medical aids are available for free to all who wish to be tested and whose results are known 5 to 6 hours later, would go a long way in helping the country break the chain of community transmission of Covid-19, which the World Health Organization classified just recently as a pandemic.
Ong said that barangays are the inevitable frontliners in the fight against the COVID-19 because they are the ones who are in direct contact with the people, including those who may have been exposed with the disease. They are also the ones residents and locals more likely trust and go to first.
“What we need is a truly accessible healthcare system, deployment of more health workers, roll-out the approved testing kits and establish testing centers per barangay ASAP, and address affected sectors regarding their livelihood concerns. We need to delineate the functions of each vital part of government and society in a timely and effective manner,” Ong said.