"We’re keeping our fingers crossed."
It's Day 3 of the public health emergency declared by President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday (March 12). It began implementation on Sunday (March 15) and will last until April 14 to prevent an escalation of COVID-19 incidence in the country. Is it starting to work?
The community quarantine, a euphemism for lockdown of an urban area with no less than 12 million residents, now being implemented in Metro Manila per presidential edict and elsewhere in the country via local ordinances, is no doubt timely, necessary and well-intentioned.
The lack of clear implementing rules and regulations on community quarantine last Thursday, however, left the citizenry with a lot of questions. Among these had to do with employment and livelihood: would workers living outside of Metro Manila be allowed entry to the metro? The DILG answered affirmatively, provided they can show identification cards from their employers.
Some were worried that the government would deploy no less than 26,000 policemen and soldiers to enforce the public health emergency. They will be stationed at entry and exit points to Metro Manila, such as NLEX and SLEX, with the power to arrest and detain those who will ignore the checkpoints.
If this is a public health emergency, the main focus should have been on mobilizing the entire government to face the health crisis squarely. This means, for instance, creating more isolation rooms in both public and privately owned hospitals to deal with the increase in the number of people found to be positive with the coronavirus. We also expected Duterte to provide the DOH with billions of pesos more in funds so it can mobilize all the resources for them to do a good job of coping with the health emergency.
The socio-economic ramifications of the lockdown and the expected imposition of curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. after local government units have issued the requisite ordinances are just as mind-boggling. We see confusion and anger over the possible long lines of vehicles, both private and public, that will be stopped at NLEX and SLEX the whole day while policemen and soldiers check every passenger in both public and private vehicles with few thermal scans.
We must hasten to add that we believe the lockdown is really necessary to control the spread of COVID-19. But perhaps adequate preparations should have been done ever since the crisis began in late January to anticipate possible problems, instead of officials now hard-pressed to answer questions from the public.
At any rate, we share the sentiment of those who lament the failure of Duterte to commend all those in the health sector—doctors, nurses, medical technicians, emergency medical personnel, and men and women in uniform—who are in the frontline of efforts to halt the onslaught of the dreaded COVID-19 and to save previous lives. To all of them, we offer our sincere thanks and hope that together, we can prevail over this life-and-death situation as soon as possible.
While we're at this, the national government should thoroughly study the experience of three of our neighbors in Asia in coping with COVID-19.
Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore have been hailed for their success in combating the new coronavirus. By February 1, soon after COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore immediately implemented travel restrictions on passengers coming from the mainland, contravening the World Health Organization’s stand that travel bans were not necessary.
Hong Kong quickly put social distancing into place. Schools remain closed. Usually, busy shopping streets are largely free from foot traffic as many businesses either closed shop or asked employees to work from home. Movie theaters, churches, and basketball courts are empty. Mass gatherings have been cancelled.
In Taiwan, an island of 23 million, arrivals from the mainland were subject to health screenings before human-to-human transmission of the virus was confirmed on Jan. 20. Its rapid mobilization contrasts starkly with South Korea and Japan, which are also near China and have advanced healthcare systems.
Singapore was able to detect three times more cases than the global average because of its strong disease surveillance and effective contact tracing. The island-state's health authorities decided early on to test all influenza-like and pneumonia cases. They also hunted down every possible contact of those infected.
The Singapore government urged residents with even mild symptoms to see a doctor and refrain from going to school or work. And the government decided to foot the bill for testing and treatment of its citizens. The self-employed were even given 100 Singapore dollars per day to allow them to cope with the health emergency. The city-state was praised by the WHO for “leaving no stone unturned” in fighting the coronavirus.
We'll have to wait and see whether the lockdown will succeed and the WHO can give us a clean bill of health by mid-April. As of now, we're keeping our fingers crossed.