Eleazar: SAF deployment part of “medical solution”

The 150 elite police troopers equipped with drones and armored vehicles, along with the 100-member augmentation force also sent to Cebu City are part of the administration's "medical solution" to address the coronavirus threat, the government's quarantine enforcement task force said.

Police Lt. Gen.

Guillermo Eleazar defended the deployment of the Special Action Force in Cebu, saying "the death toll and the number of infected people would have been higher than the current figures had it not (sic) for the quarantine measures that were implemented across the country as early as March 15."

On Monday—just the third day after more police were deployed—the Joint Task Force COVID Shield, of which Eleazar sits as commander, asserted that it was seeing "significant improvement" in the residents' "compliance" of quarantine rules in the city.

“Even the medical community recognizes the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is it, we have been deploying policemen and soldiers to man checkpoint and to enforce quarantine rules in the communities because we are on the side of preventing the transmission of the virus,” said Eleazar.

“All government agencies are working together to address the COVID-19 pandemic. On the law enforcement side, we assure the public that the JTF COVID Shield is working 24/7 to prevent the transmission of the virus and eventually save as many Filipinos from the infection,” he added.

At his public address on Tuesday night, even President Rodrigo Duterte hurled an expletive at the people of Cebu City for what he said was their role in causing the new surge in coronavirus cases.

"You're all so stubborn. You never follow directions. That's the truth, I'll be frank with you. You are angry with me. I am angry at you...Do not F with me," the chief executive was quoted as saying.

Blaming the public for shortcomings involving the pandemic has long been a pattern of behavior among government officials, from Interior Secretary Eduardo Año to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.

Eleazar himself previously accused Filipinos of going out for leisure, an assertion counter to an SWS survey that found that Filipinos take the pandemic seriously and follow health protocols and data from Google that showed most Filipinos stayed home during the quarantine.

"The continuous rise of COVID-19 cases in Cebu City is attributed to the complacency of local residents for their failure to observe the basic minimum health safety protocols such as wearing of face masks, observance of the proper physical distancing, avoiding unnecessary travels and staying at home as much as possible," the task force's statement reads.

Mobility data and Social Weather Stations surveys published over the quarantine period demonstrate that this claim is, for the most part, unsubstantiated, showing that Filipinos generally stay at home and take the global pandemic seriously, only going out in times of absolute necessity and the like.

According to SWS, 87% of Filipinos are generally more afraid of getting and transmitting COVID-19 compared to any other pathogen in the past, while 77% of them make use face masks when going out of their houses. Four out of five Filipinos indeed left their houses at the time the survey was conducted—for food.

This, while experts and academics from both the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas have said that the rise in cases is not inevitable and "can be offset with a rigorous tracking, testing, and tracing program and that "mass randomized testing and contact tracing will help determine the actual number of cases, including asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases, and will help control the spread of COVID-19."

Palace spokesman Harry Roque has since congratulated the Philippines for "beating" the University of the Philippines' prediction. Philstar.com