Are the ‘new’ pandemic guidelines the answer to our prayers?
But what we should not lose sight of is the projections published by OCTA Research in their journals that there may be as many as 30,000 daily Covid-10 cases by the end of the month. Even the DOH sees that we are headed in that direction. This is where Limpin is coming from. She had merely expressed the fear and anguish of those who had lost their loved ones to the virus.
Starting September 16 up to the month’s end, some areas in the country, specifically Metro Manila, will be under another experiment to restrain a pandemic, which the government has miserably failed to keep in check, much less eradicate.
After randomly scooping up and shuffling five letters from the Alphabet soup (ECQMG), the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has decided to categorize areas of containment using numbers borrowed from cyclone alert warnings. Numbers 5 to 1 will be assigned to each locality depending on the severity of Covid infection. Thus, number 5 has been designated as the highest alert level where infection cases are considered dire, with hospital and intensive care absorptive capacities in precarious juncture. Alert Level 5 is similar to enhanced community quarantine, the strictest lockdown level, while the remaining descending order numbers correspond to more lenient lockdown categories.
But instead of choosing which areas in Metro Manila should be padlocked, National Capital Region (NCR) mayors on Tuesday decided to place the entire Metro under one alert level—category 4, the secondhighest alert level—to launch the pilot run of granular lockdowns “for uniformity and easier enforcement,” according to Interior Secretary Eduardo Año.
At present, NCR is classified at high risk, said Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, “as it maintains a moderate risk two-week growth rate and high risk average daily attack rate.”
Under Alert Level 4, outdoor or al fresco dining will be permitted at 30 percent capacity. Indoor dine-in will only be allowed at 10 percent and open only to the fully vaccinated. Restricted mobility is imposed on minors; people aged 65 and above; individuals with comorbidities and immunodeficiencies, and pregnant women. Those who are not required to stay at home may do interzonal and intrazonal travel. Individual outdoor exercises for all ages, regardless of vaccination status, shall be limited within their area of residence. Seniors may go out, but only to access essential goods and services, or work in offices and industries permitted by the government to function, albeit on a limited scope.
By this time, I’m sure the IATF and the DOH have already disseminated to different news organizations and posted on their respective web sites specific guidelines for each alert level for everyone to follow.
The way I see it, the government is trying to slowly open up some semblance of commerce which has been crippled by different Covid variants. It just cannot afford to lose vital businesses that could shore up an economy severely hammered by the pandemic, in the same way that it doesn’t want to put many people out of work. It is catastrophic, to say the least. But the question is: will these ‘new’ guidelines put the country in a much better shape to combat the deadly microbe from where we were?
As I’ve written many months before, the battle to slow down the Covid spread should not be a zerosum game. Unfortunately, what we have all been witnessing in the past 18 months under the world’s harshest lockdown has been the government’s inability to strike a balance between public health and the economy. It has become a chicken-and-egg cliché since President Duterte appears to suffer from short-attention span. Instead of focusing on curbing the Covid-19 pandemic, he has been sidetracked by other political issues. His weekly pandemic report has been peppered by diatribes, usually punctuated by cusswords directed at his critics. Lately, the President has not been coy in using his weekly televised report as a platform to promote his political plans for the 2022 polls.
Perhaps people have become weary or dissatisfied with the too little or mostly hazy information they get from his weekly talkathon about the government’s pandemic response. Data compiled by social monitoring platform Crowdtangle show that viewership of the President’s prerecorded speeches posted in PTV-4’S official Facebook page has suffered record lows since June of this year. Nearly all netizens’ comments show disdain for the President’s disjointed brainwaves.
At the moment, lawmakers are bent on solving problems, such as why and when Duterte should fire Health Secretary Francisco Duque III. To them, Duque is the weakest link in the government’s pandemic-response chain; his leadership of the department severely weighed down by charges of inefficiency and corruption. It is only Duterte’s defense of Duque’s integrity that seems to be saving him from a steep fall. In recent weeks, however, the President has made known that he would not fire the DOH chief, but would accept Duque’s resignation.
How can Duterte and his men keep doing what they do? One answer may be the 90+ trust rating the President supposedly has, based on a poll done by Pulse Asia. This survey now serves as the administration’s badge, believing the people approve of whatever they do.
Beyond issuing quarantine alert levels, the government should be truly sensitive to the people’s needs and miseries. It is not only the business, health, and labor sectors that are hurting; almost the entire Philippine population is. The pandemic, aggravated by the government’s inaction, seems to be an endless source of hopelessness and helplessness for many people who have become more vocal with their dissatisfaction, aggravated by the government’s inaction.
The problem with this administration is that it treats well-meaning advice from concerned sectors as a slur to its governance. When Vice President Leni Robredo and other health experts offer some solutions, for instance, Duterte readily dismisses them as nonsense. “Don’t listen to them” is his usual refrain, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all Filipinos are in this together. Those who express their grievances against the inept pandemic response are not the enemy; the virus is.
In a leaked video of a September 7 pandemic task force meeting, the sight of a fuming Palace Spokesperson Harry Roque—looking much like a predator about to pounce on a cornered prey—shocked everyone. The virtual meeting was conducted right before the government announced that it was not downgrading Metro Manila to general community quarantine, but will instead pilot-test a new localized lockdown. Repeatedly pointing his finger, Roque lashed out at Dr. Maricar Limpin, president of the umbrella organization Philippine College of Physicians, which counts over 9,000 members nationwide. Limpin, a pulmonary critical care and sleep specialist, is a convenor of the Healthcare Professional Alliance Against Covid-19. She later said that she felt humiliated and insulted by Roque when he berated her and their group for opposing the government’s planned shift to granular lockdowns from region-wide quarantine classifications.
Netizens and other groups described Roque’s outburst as uncalled for. Limpin later told Rappler in an interview that she did not expect a government official, much less the presidential spokesperson, to scold her when she had merely wanted “to help alleviate the plight of the healthcare system. If Secretary Roque can do this to us doctors, what more for other people?”
Roque who was nominated by the government to the International Law Commission, insists that it was never his intention to disparage doctors and other health professionals. He professes that he is merely taking the cudgels for the working class who are getting the bad end of the bargain in prolonged lockdowns, and got too emotional in expressing such. But several lawyers’ groups say Roque—if ever appointed to the ILC—IS a disgrace “and may diminish the body and may taint its credibility.” The National Union of People’s Lawyers says the bid of Roque to the ILC post is a “hypocritical ambition of a fellow Filipino lawyer to reinvent himself ” and is “morally undeserving to be part of this august international legal organ.”
But what we should not lose sight of is the projections published by OCTA Research in their journals that there may be as many as 30,000 daily Covid-10 cases by the end of the month. Even the DOH sees that we are headed in that direction. This is where Limpin is coming from. She had merely expressed the fear and anguish of those who had lost their loved ones to the virus.
I just hope that these new guidelines would be able to offer some reprieve to the mounting health and financial worries plaguing many of us. May God help us all!