Senator Joel Villanueva said the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is so dismal that it needs “an immediate booster shot.”
He was reacting to a recent survey showing that the Philippine government got the lowest approval rating for its response to the pandemic among Southeast Asian countries.
In a statement, Villanueva, chairman of the Senate labor committee, said he was not surprised by the results of the survey given the unsatisfactory performance of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases in handling the pandemic.
“It only confirms what most Filipinos feel. And the writing on the wall has been evident for all of us to see,” Villanueva in a statement.
He said the government response required scaling up because “the health crisis is fast turning into a humanitarian crisis.”
Findings by the Singapore-based ASEAN Studies Center showed that a majority or 53.7 percent of its Filipino respondents were dissatisfied with the Duterte administration’s handling of the health crisis at home, which has led to more than 541,000 infections and 11,401 deaths to date.
Among those surveyed are Filipinos in the policy, research, business, civil society and media communities and the results showed that the Philippines had the lowest approval rating for their government’s response to the pandemic among Southeast Asian countries.
“That is not the kind of news that desperate and discouraged people would like to hear. One aspect of pandemic management is that you dispense hope that will boost the morale of the nation,” he said.
Villanueva said that mitigating the impact of rising food prices and dwindling supply essential food products in the market should be the immediate concern of the IATF managing the effects of the pandemic.
The Philippines has remained the region’s second-worst hit by the pandemic. Its neighbor Indonesia which has the highest number of cases at 1.17 million and nearly 32,000 deaths, yielded a 50.4 percent disapproval against 24.1 percent approval and 25.6 percent neutral.
In contrast, Vietnam had the highest approval rating among its citizens at 96.6 percent, followed by Brunei at 93.9 percent and Singapore at 92.4 percent.
Villanueva said funded government programs designed to mitigate the ill-effects of the pandemic should be implemented immediately and their budget spent.
Gauging from the slack on government spending in the 2021 national budget, Villanueva lamented that that “there seems to be no sense of urgency on the part of the agencies concerned.”
Villanueva also urged the government to “speed up vaccine delivery because telling people that it will be completed by 2023 is a big letdown for them.”
In contrast, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey released Thursday said most Filipinos believe the worst of the COVID-19 crisis is over.
Some 69 percent of adult Filipinos said “the worst is behind us,” the November poll found— a 22 percent increase from a similar survey conducted in September.
Fears that the “worst is yet to come” also dropped to 31 percent from the 47 percent it recorded in the last survey, the pollster said.
SWS conducted the survey on people’s outlook on the health crisis, from Nov. 21 to 25 using face-to-face interviews with 1,500 adult Filipinos.
Notably, it was held before a post-holiday surge in COVID-19 cases and the confirmation of cases of the more transmissible UK variant in the country.
In the House of Representatives, an opposition leader urged the administration to use medical and not military solutions to combat the pandemic.
Assistant Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro said close to one year into the longest lockdown, the government should seriously accept the fact that its perceived military approach to a health crisis does not solve anything.
“Unless the government changes its tactics with how it deals with the COVID-19 pandemicl… the people will have to suffer the hardships caused by the Duterte administration’s failed response to this serious health and economic crisis,” Castro said.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, on the other hand, batted for a proper vaccination training for local governments’ front liners and transporters.
“To make sure their swift (vaccination) action as ordered by the President would not go to waste, we should also make sure that all personnel tasked to handle and administer the vaccines are adequately trained to either keep the drugs in storage facilities or to administer the anti-COVID shots,” Villafuerte said.
Filipino Nurses United (FNU), meanwhile, called for transparency and accountability in the rollout of “free, safe and efficacious” vaccines against coronavirus “in the light of many controversial events.”
FNU said controversies such as the unauthorized vaccination of military men and the violation of health protocols by some public officials have left health workers doubtful of the government’s transparency with the vaccination program.
“What we need is transparency and consistency in words of care and actual support to health workers,” the group said in a statement.