Rudderless

As of Tuesday afternoon, nine more cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines have been announced by the Department of Health (DOH), bringing the total number to 33. The DOH and the Duterte administration have repeatedly urged the public not to panic, to stay calm and to listen to health authorities in the face of the outbreak; it is a valid appeal that must be heeded. But it would help matters so much more if the government itself were more straightforward and less confused and confusing in its actions and pronouncements.Despite the public presentations and press conferences that have followed since the official declaration of a state of public health emergency last Monday, for instance, no explanation has been offered for why that declaration by President Duterte was made nearly three weeks late. Health Secretary Francisco Duque III had recommended the move as early as Feb. 21, when the Philippines had only three COVID-19 cases; Mr. Duterte approved it only on Saturday, March 7—and, in a further delay, Malacañang let the weekend pass before releasing the official memo.

What would have changed with the heightened public health status? The declaration “will facilitate mobilization of resources, ease processes, including procurement of critical logistics and supplies, and intensify reporting and quarantine measures,” said Duque. Which means that, had the administration made the declaration much earlier, extra funds and more lead time would have been available to procure the most critical tool: testing kits. Sen. Nancy Binay’s expression of horror reflected the public’s reaction when health officials revealed just last Monday at a Senate hearing that the DOH only has 2,000 test kits on hand, against a population of over 100 million and with COVID-19 cases already at 20 by Monday afternoon, double from the 10 of the previous evening. (That 20 would jump to 24 by the time President Duterte held his press conference on Monday night.) The DOH could only promise some 4,500 more test kits on the way, courtesy of the World Health Organization (WHO). A direct result of the lack of test kits: The DOH admitted it may have caused the “unintentional underreporting” of cases in the country, leading to more anxiety and skepticism among the public.

An earlier health emergency declaration might have also nudged the DOH to fine-tune its reporting and communication protocols way before the crunch period, preventing the bewilderment that arose when, for instance, in confirming the fifth coronavirus case in the country last Friday, Duque initially denied it was a local transmission—only for the WHO to contradict him: “Even the fifth case is a local transmission,” it said. The garbled messaging also extended to the reporting of cases by private companies. Per an ABS-CBN report, even after Deloitte Philippines had announced that one of its employees had tested positive for the virus and that it was taking “all necessary actions” to manage the situation, the DOH said it was still confirming the case, and that “hindi umano nakipag-ugnayan ang Deloitte sa ahensiya” (Deloitte didn’t coordinate with DOH). At a press conference, an irate Duque essentially made the same point against the Cardinal Santos Medical Center for its own statement confirming it had treated a COVID-19 patient. But if the reporting obligations on such cases were unclear at this late stage, whose oversight is that? Who is supposed to be on top of the situation? And how might the sight of the country’s top health official getting all heated up in public contribute to promoting calm and sobriety among the citizenry?

Which brings us to President Duterte’s disastrous, dispiriting Monday night appearance, where the nation’s chief executive, expected to provide his countrymen a message of hope that would help ease their minds—that their government is doing all it can to protect the well-being of all Filipinos at a fraught time like this—instead delivered a deeply confounding stream-of-consciousness performance, part of which went: “The kit, is the kit, walang… walang lumalabas pa. I think that… Sabi ko nga eh… in every—not every generation but epoch, maybe meron nung una, Bubonic Plague, ’yung mga gago ang tao no’n, tamang-tama lang. Tapos ’yung Spanish Flu, right before, o after the war, Second World War. Kawawa ’yung mga tao. Pero mas kawawa ’yung sa Middle East. The so-called Roman Empire. You have read the Inquisition, kung may birth mark ka, you are a witch and you are burned at stake.”Mr. Duterte, coughing occasionally, also joked that he had the coronavirus, and basically threw up his hands: “You cannot prevent it [the contamination].” No doubt health frontliners are doing a tremendous job, but after such a display of unserious, seemingly rudderless government, is it any wonder many Filipinos feel even more tense and uneasy?