EDITORIAL - Unused and wasted

According to the Commission on Audit, the Department of Interior and Local Government still has P577 million in COVID-19 funds that should have been spent on contract tracing.

"Funds were not fully utilized and later reverted to the unappropriated surplus of the General Fund due to change of plans and funds intended for payment to contact tracers were not fully downloaded/transferred to regional offices and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,” COA said in their report.

Take note that these are not funds that were misspent or lost through corruption, rather funds that should have been spent but were not. While this isn’t a sign of graft, it can be argued that this may be a result of incompetence or bad judgment, or perhaps a bit of both.

One reason why COVID-19 spread like wildfire among our populace at the height of the pandemic here was because people were getting infected by people they least suspected. Many among us didn’t know we were at constant risk of getting infected, or that we were even carriers of the virus and had infected others.

This is where contact tracers would have been useful. If enough of them would have been available to find, notify, interview, and advise close contacts of patients with confirmed COVID-19 or people suspected to have it, the story would have been more different.

For months on end the Philippines was repeatedly advised by the World Health Organization that effective contact tracing, and not forced community lockdowns, was more effective in ending the chain of transmission.

We cannot totally fault the DILG for coming up short in this regard. It may have had its hands full with carrying out their functions in the middle of lockdown and disruptions. This pandemic was a first for many of us. Not even the richest countries with boundless resources and the best healthcare systems in place was ready for it.

But this just makes us think that if enough contact tracers had been hired, properly trained, equipped, and paid to do what they should have done --look for possible spreaders of the most disruptive illness of our time-- then maybe some of us could have been spared sickness, hospitalization, or even death.