Search and extract

Since Metro Manila was eased into general community quarantine, I’ve seen more and more people including young children outside their homes along secondary streets during curfew hours, eating or simply getting some air, gathering together without bothering about distancing. Many don’t wear masks.

All live in informal settlements, or in communities where the alleys are so narrow two persons can’t fit if walking abreast. As one government official put it, a family in such communities may be sharing a living space of just five square meters.

What happens when a member of such a household is infected with COVID-19? Clearly, home isolation for the infected is impossible. And spreading the COVID-causing SARS-coronavirus-2 to the other members of the household is highly likely.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) initially allowed home quarantine for mild and asymptomatic COVID cases. But now, with fresh cases surging in certain areas, someone might have noticed that the clustering is happening in areas where the typical dwelling makes physical distancing difficult or even impossible.

So home quarantine is now discouraged for mild and asymptomatic cases with no space at home for effective isolation.

Many people, however, don’t relish the idea of spending 14 days in a quarantine facility away from home, outside a hospital, with other infected strangers. Especially if the patient has only mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all. Even the free stay in a sunny room surrounded by windows, with free food and WiFi, en-suite chamberpot and washbasin, plus P3,000 thrown in, offered by the San Juan government, for example, can’t compare with the comforts of home or a private room in a reputable hospital.

Some hospitals are in fact seeing their COVID-dedicated sections filled to capacity partly because there are mild or asymptomatic patients who prefer to spend their 14-day quarantine in a hospital rather than in a government-run isolation center.

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The resistance to undergo isolation away from home is strongest among patients who are solely in charge of taking care of young children or elderly relatives – as some persons currently on home quarantine have lamented in media interviews.

The remedy here, according to government officials, is to find a caretaker for the children and elderly, instead of exposing them to the risk of infection in a cramped space. This, unfortunately, is easier said than done for certain impoverished households.

Considering the documented virulence of coronavirus disease 2019, however, the argument makes sense.

On the other hand, as in the fears surrounding the Anti-Terrorism Act, there are valid concerns over the enforcement of the “house-to-house search” announced by Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año for mild and asymptomatic COVID cases currently under home quarantine.

Officials have since clarified that it won’t be a literal house-to-house activity, although until Wednesday, Año and police officials continued to use the phrase “house to house.” Instead, local government and health personnel will knock on the doors of the mild or asymptomatic cases on the official list of the Department of Health. The health workers will decide whether the patient’s home is equipped for isolation – meaning the patient has his or her own room with its own toilet and bath, and there are no elderly or pregnant persons or those with comorbidities in the household.

What happens if those conditions are not met, and the patient refuses to transfer to a state-run quarantine facility?

This is where the cops step in.

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And this is where concerns about possible human rights violations come in. Even in the inspection of the house, lawmakers and rights advocates have stressed the constitutionally guaranteed right to be safe in one’s home against unwarranted searches.

Critics are likening what the government has dubbed as Oplan Kalinga to the drug war’s Oplan Tokhang. Kalinga is now underway.

Philippine National Police deputy chief Lt. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, commander of the Joint Task Force COVID Shield, explained that the PNP serves as backup for the health and local government personnel who carry out the house tracing.

If a COVID patient is deemed by the health personnel to be posing a risk to other members of the household because of the absence of proper isolation facilities, the patient must be moved out of the house, Eleazar said.

If the patient resists, police can then move in and take the patient away to a quarantine facility. Año called it “extraction.” This is allowed under Republic Act 11332 or the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act, Eleazar told “The Chiefs” on Wednesday night on One News / TV 5.

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The PNP has acknowledged that Oplan Kalinga will be focusing on congested communities – inevitably, impoverished areas – where physical distancing and isolation for COVID cases can be impossible.

Is the move anti-poor?

Eleazar begs to disagree, pointing out that it will be irresponsible and reckless endangerment if a COVID patient refuses to stay away from household members and the neighborhood. In short, it truly is kalinga – the government caring for the majority of the people.

A health official lamented that perhaps it was a problem of semantics, and “house-to-house search” was not the proper term to use. DILG and PNP officials, however, have stuck to the term despite the clarification from Malacañang.

Throughout the pandemic, governments have been performing a difficult balancing act not only between life and livelihood but also between public health and human rights.

Only the implementation of the house search for COVID cases will show whether there is nothing to fear about Oplan Kalinga.