Ready or not for lifting of COVID-19 lockdown?

Community lockdown was not to end the COVID-19 pandemic. It was only to buy us time.

Did we gear up for return to semi-normal?

Even with precautions, tens of millions of workers will be taking their chances against deadly infection. Vital is to detect, test, isolate, treat every suspected case, as WHO prescribes. It’s unclear if DOH already has enough of its preferred Polymerase Chain Reaction test kits. Flagship Projects chief Vince Dizon is rushing to build 61 processing labs to bolster the present 17. National Action Plan chief Carlito Galvez had wanted 30,000 tests a day, or a million a month, starting last Apr. 15. Hailed by epidemiologist as a modest doable, it had to be moved to May 15. From DOH data last week only 4,674 persons were tested; 5,182 if retests are counted, as infectees need up to three or four times.

Dearth of kits and labs sullies the reports. Test results are a week late, infectious disease specialist Dr. Benjamin Co notes in his blog, relativejoyforyou.wordpress.com. If not real-time, reports throw off decision makers.

DOH is unable to capture all data, another medical leader adds. No one knows if recent deaths in homes and small hospitals from TB, pneumonia, COPD and other respiratory ailments – among the top six causes of Filipino mortality this decade – were hastened by COVID-19. (China and New York had to redo pandemic figures on belated analyses of fatalities.) DOH counts only 623 pandemic deaths since Jan. Recorded Philippine deaths from all causes and age groups in 2013 was 531,280. If that average 44,000 deaths a month persists today, how many are induced by COVID-19 infection?

“We are not bending the curve,” warns Dr. Co, a pharmacologist as well. DOH’s website has a linear graph of daily new cases, recoveries and deaths. In Dr. Co’s blog a logarithmic scale shows the doubling time of infectees. From an exponential growth every 7.2 days as of May 1, decision makers can plot weeks ahead.

Dr. Co advocates wider testing. Limiting it to “only patients with severe symptoms [will] miss the majority – those with mild or no symptoms” who can be spreading disease, he says. “The quality of these numbers ... has ramifications on contact tracing, isolation and workup of patients.”

But contact tracing is inexistent, Sen. Sonny Angara has said. Other than going after critics of the administration in Jan.-Mar., elite investigation agencies have not trained volunteers. Amply reported was Wuhan’s 1,800 teams of five members each seeking out every exposed person. Too, that South Korea and Taiwan ably used tracking apps. Newly appointed Galvez has to take on that work himself.

Sleaze and neglect mar the effort. Five state facilities swiftly were refurbished to quarantine and treat mild infectees for free. Yet labor bureaucrats leased for manning contractors inapt hotels and resorts in Manila and Batangas to house repatriated overseas workers. There the “guests” mixed with staff untrained for COVID-19 and unsuspecting neighbors. Police squads were made to guard round the clock handfuls of repatriates. Still sly ones managed to shorten their hotel quarantine by getting “special clearance.” (Government sources have provided documents.) Some of them sneaked into hometowns. Alert health officers in Cebu city and province detected and tested them to be infected.

Not all provinces and cities are as prepared as Cebu, Valenzuela, or Marikina. Those local governments built and fund their own isolation, testing, and treatment centers for mild cases. They stockpiled medicines and supplies, and recruited healthcare workers to free nearby hospitals for severe and critical cases. Most LGUs have overlooked the advice of infectious disease physician Dr. Dennis Garcia to rely on own resources.

The national government is short on support for private hospitals that bear bulk of the anti-COVID-19 work. The University of Santo Tomas Hospital announced a layoff of employees since PhilHealth has not reimbursed it P180 million in patient-care advances for six months. PhilHealth denies the UST claim. Yet it pays hospitals only P43,997, P143,267, P333,519, and P786,384 per mild, moderate, severe, and critical COVID-19 case. Those are but fractions of true treatment cost. One PCR test alone is P6,000-P8,000, plus P2,000-P4,000 per set of personal protective equipment of attending doctors, nurses, x-ray and lab technicians, and orderlies. Hospitals are barred from charging any more than PhilHealth’s limits. There has been no help from government for hospitals to acquire additional ventilators and ICU gear.

The rains have come. Brace for dengue, seasonal flu, and measles, warns Dr. Tony Leachon, special adviser to Galvez.

DOH reports that 1,772 health workers have been infected as of May 3 – 19.2 percent of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The state’s premiere Research Institute for Tropical Medicine has suffered cluster outbreak. So have frontline Lung Center, San Lazaro, two other public, and possibly private hospitals too. If that can happen to health professionals, then more so to ordinary folk when lockdown ends.

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Retrofitted quarantine and treatment facility, the Manila South Harbor passenger terminal is now fully occupied. All 211 beds are devoted to Filipino seafarers and cruise staff repatriated last week. The state property is the first to be converted to pandemic emergency use. Initiated by Ports Authority general manager Jay Daniel Santiago, rush work was funded by the Lopez Group under First Pacific Holdings chairman Federico Lopez. The latter’s P100-million donation is for other transport department anti-pandemic supplies as well.

Water is provided by Maynilad, electricity including 24/7 air-conditioning by Meralco, Wi-Fi by Asian Terminals Inc., food by the Philippine Coast Guard. Defense Sec. and Task Force head Delfin Lorenzana noted the facility was better than many he has visited in Asia.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8 to 10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

My book “Exposés: Investigative Reporting for Clean Government” is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Expos%C3%A9s-Investigative-Reporting-Clean-Government-ebook/dp/B00EPX01BG

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