Struggling with the\ndilemma for about a month now \u2013 caught between the lack of science and intense\npressure from big business to continue profit-making \u2013 the Duterte government\nis about to decide to transition the country to a general community quarantine\n(GCQ). Its narrative has been apparent \u2013 it is winning against the coronavirus\nand is ready to pick up from the economic slump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before you obey the\ngovernment when it says it is alright to go out now, please answer the\nfollowing questions truthfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Have we flattened the curve? No one really knows. The health department has cited the doubling time slowing down from 3 to 5.5 days and wrongly used it as proxy indicator that the government is winning the curve war. Up to this point, we know nothing. We know about daily new cases, like we had 350 new cases on May 26, the highest since April 7. We know about 14,669 cases nationwide and our high 6% mortality rate. But these metrics are based on a government pandemic response where there is only limited testing. Our knowledge thus can only be that \u2013 limited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The curve is all about\nthe infection rate of the virus – any effort to flatten it is futile if there\nis no mass testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine. We hoped to\nhave that sane health response in that order, but government simply imposed a\nhard lockdown, euphemized as enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), without mass\ntesting and strengthening the rest of the health system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Presidential\nspokesperson Harry Roque quibbling over the semantics of \u201cmass testing\u201d is also\na pathetic attempt to tiptoe around the issue. There is no such thing as mass\ntesting, Malaca\u00f1ang would repeatedly say, but would later clarify that it was\nreferring to government policy on mass testing, a much worse admission\nactually. Then later, government would go by the\n\u201cwe-don\u2019t-have-the-money-for-that\u201d narrative, which only makes apparent that\nthe overarching governance principle of the Duterte administration during COVID\nor otherwise is to evade and default on state responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Curves\nand waves \u2013 these have only brought down the credibility not only of the health\ndepartment but of the entire inter-agency task force. Such mass confusion\nshouldn\u2019t even have happened while we are in the middle of the pandemic. But\nyes, that\u2019s where we are \u2013 almost three months of lockdown and we are still\ndebating on terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Have we increased our\ntesting capacity? Again, in this regard, Malaca\u00f1ang has made another confusing\nclaim that we have already reached 30,000 per day testing capacity. All we know\nis that we only have 42 testing centers nationwide, not all were even\noperational from the beginning of the lockdown. \nThe highest number that these centers have tested per day is 10,841\nunique individuals. From May 16 to May 25, the government has only tested a\ndaily average of 8,077 samples. The health department also has a backlog of\n6,835 for validation of positive results, which are not yet included in the\n14,669 confirmed cases. There are 818,338 remaining kits on hand, which may not\nrefer to the number of tests that may be done because laboratories count all\nthe supplies they have to make one test. In any case, what use is it that we\nhave the kits if government still won\u2019t have a directed program of free mass\ntesting? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. Have we strengthened\nthe health system? The country has only 1,845 COVID-19 referral and accepting\nhospitals, and most of these are private hospitals, while the Department of\nHealth (DOH) accounts for only 73 of these. There are only a reported 72\nquarantine facilities nationwide, and these are even operating under\ncapacities. Some of the so-called quarantine facilities assigned for returning\noverseas Filipino workers are also reportedly crowded and lacking medical\nservices. Obviously, the DOH is more inclined towards personal or home\nquarantining than building public facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are 478 ICU beds, 2,356 isolation beds, 972 ward beds, and\n816 mechanical ventilators in the public health system of the National Capital\nRegion (NCR). On the average, around 56% of these beds are currently occupied\nbased on DOH data, while 28% of the mechanical ventilators are being used. The\nNCR has 9,481 confirmed cases \u2013 6,312 are active, of which 823 have been\nadmitted while the majority 5,373 are still pending status. To put simply, if\nall active cases had to be admitted in the public hospitals, which is the ideal\ntreatment if only we had many quarantine facilities, NCR with a total of only\n3,806 beds of different uses would be swamped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is unspoken is the\ncost of consultation and hospitalization that pushes patients away to just go\nhome without getting any medical attention. The main weakness of the Philippine\nhealth system is that the government has a universal health care law that is\ninsurance-driven instead of focused on direct service provision. It is a\nuniversal misnomer that is more inclined to ensure the profits of private\nhospitals instead of socializing health care. For COVID-19, PhilHealth can only\nprovide Php14,000 per worker for admission and referral and at least\nPhp43,997-786,384 for confinement, which are not enough. This affliction of a\ncommercialized and privatized health system has been manifestly bared during\nthe coronavirus crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Philippines has the\nhighest proportion of infected health frontliners in the region, reaching about\n17% of total infected population. This worries the World Health Organization\nbecause the country apparently is an outlier in a region that registers only a 2-3%\nproportion of infected health frontliners. This tragedy can only be explained\nby the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for our frontliners,\ngovernment\u2019s delayed and limited procurement of PPE, lack of DOH guidelines and\ntraining, and the frontliners being overburdened. Even the plan to hire and\nbeef up the number of health workers by hundreds of thousands is not attracting\napplicants, what with government offering the same low compensation levels and\nthankless jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ready for the GCQ? If you don\u2019t know the answers because government has failed to inform you, or if you indeed know the answers as government has failed to take action, by all means go out and make government answerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(The third sentence of the third paragraph was corrected on 28 My 2020 from previously being: The health department has cited the doubling time going down from 7 to 5.5 days and wrongly used it as proxy indicator that the government is winning the curve war<\/em>. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused. Thank you.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BIRD FEED | Rosario Guzman | Struggling with the dilemma for about a month now \u2013 caught between the lack of science and intense pressure from big business to continue profit-making \u2013 the Duterte government is about to decide to transition the country to a general community quarantine (GCQ).<\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":9720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,2049],"tags":[2218,347,2254,2253,2240,555],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9715"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9729,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9715\/revisions\/9729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}