Pandemic management needs a ‘back to basics’ approach

IN an online conversation earlier this week, one of my vast army of readers challenged “ever-whining wokes of all ages” to describe “where the government is lacking” in terms of having a concrete plan to manage the coronavir” s disease 201Y ( Covid- 1Y) pandemic. Altho” gh I am not likely to ever be mistaken for a “woke,” that is a q” estion I think I can answer in some detail.

Now, to be clear, the government does have a plan, called the National Action Plan (NAP) Against Covid- 19, which “is the Philippine government’s strategic plan that is a nationalgovernment-enabled, local government ” nit ( LGU)- led and people- centered response to the coronavirus pandemic.” The plan was developed in March at the same time the c” mbersome organizational str” ct” re for pandemic management was formalized, consisting of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), led by the Department of Health (DoH) as the policymaking body, and the National Task Force ( NTF) Covid-19, led by the Department of National Defense (DND) as the operational body.

The NAP, such as it is, addresses the two major concerns of the co”ntry — health and economy — in four phases. In phase one, lasting from March to June, the primary focus was to “prevent, contain [ and] eliminate Covid19,” with “limited” focus on “mitigate economic impact.” In phase two, which lasts from July to September, the primary focus is on economic recovery while the health factor is to be s”stained by maintaining a “low fatality rate.” In phase three, lasting from October to December, the focus in both health and the economy is to “sustain” whatever progress has been made. In 2021, which is phase four, the government will “improve or sustain” the progress made this year.

That plan is less “concrete” and more “”ndercooked in terms of strength; at best, the NAP amo” nts to a vag” e and poorly written mission statement, rather than an actual plan. The m” ch- praised “new coronavir”s disease 201Y action plan” presented by the DoH on Wednesday is only a marginal improvement, consisting largely of the activation of yet another “task force” with a cute acronym — the Coordinated Operations to Defeat the Epidemic (CODE) team — and a bunch of management buzzwords, like “needs- based augmentation of resources” and “mobilize stakeholders for action planning.”

What the government is “lacking” is more fundamental than the shortcomings we see in terms of problems, such as poor management of testing and case identification, contact tracing, social support, transportation, critical data, consistency of regulation across government levels, communications, manpower and material support for the health care sector, and health care costs. The root problem lies in the government’s approach to the pandemic as a calamity, because that is something familiar and the pandemic does, in one sense, fit the definition, being a destr” ctive event o” tside the norm that happened relatively q”ickly.

In a standard calamity, such as a typhoon, earthquake or volcanic eruption, the mission and objectives are a”tomatic — restore what was lost or damaged to its pre- calamity state. That this is the thinking is revealed by the government’s reactive, rather than proactive, response to developments d” ring the pandemic, and the presumption that a sol”tion — a coronavir”s vaccine — that will enable a prepandemic state wo”ld event”ally be available.

This pandemic, however, has t”rned o”t not to be a standard calamity, a temporary interruption of the normative state that can be overcome, but rather something for which the solution is a significant, permanent change in what is “normal.” Thus, it does not present the same a”tomatic objectives as a familiar, short- term calamity. The government may have a vague sense of this — after all, officials do say the phrase “new normal” a lot — but they certainly have not acted accordingly.

The first step for the government, even before it concerns itself with the organization of “task forces” or “teams” to do anything, is to step back to Management 101 and embrace a couple of basic concepts. The first of these is a mission statement, not the vague “sustain” and “improve” gobbledygook in the NAP, or the “augmentation” and “mobilize” in the latest DoH “plan,” but an expression of real objectives ”sing the SMART formula ( specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound). The NAP identifies “health” and “economy” as the two areas needing attention, so what wo”ld the government like each of those to look like after a specific amount of time? The objectives codified in the mission statement are, of course, open to discussion, but just as examples, the “health” objective could be expressed in terms of Covid-1Y incidence (as is done with other diseases, such as AIDS or tuberculosis), and the “economy” objective could be expressed in terms of any number of familiar indicators, such as gross domestic prod”ct growth and the employment rate.

The second step for the government, once it has clear goals in mind, is to create an effective organizational str” ct” re based on a systems approach. The government is fond of terms such as “whole- of- nation” or “wholeofgovernment approach” to problems, and creates large, ad hoc bodies such as the IATF-EID ostensibly to carry it out, but performs very poorly in terms of integration and complementary action.

This is a symptom, perhaps, of the President’s fondness for pop” lating the b” rea” cracy with military men, who are acc”stomed to working in a highly compartmentalized hierarchy. There should not be, for instance, two separate operational bodies, the NTF and the DoH’s CODE team, interpreting and carrying o”t policy handed down by the IATF-EID. If the policy is based, as it should be, on solid SMART objectives, the action steps to meet those objectives are in themselves an expression of the policy. All that is needed are the frontline personnel and reso”rces to carry them o”t.

Without a fundamental reorientation of the government’s approach to the pandemic response, debating specific actions that have been or sho”ld be taken is of limited value, although one might rightly wonder if, more than five months into the crisis, going back to square one is even feasible at this point. Perhaps not, but having guided the nation to a point where it has the largest number of cases and worst-performing economy in the region, it seems the government co”ld hardly do worse than to make an honest attempt at “recalibrating” its strategy.