Like Pilate washing his hands

By JB DEVEZA.

MORE and more cities and municipalities are shutting down their borders following Metro Manila’s de facto lockdown last week. President Rodrigo Duterte said the ‘enhanced community quarantine’ measures, which has been expanded to include the whole of Luzon, is projected to last till April 14.

 Streets are emptying and human activities are slowing down to a crawl.

 But will staying home or social distancing be enough to get our lives back come April 14?

 The World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that even as more and more countries, the Philippines among them, implement stricter containment measures, these only delays the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19. But the impact of these measures, it said, “will only be possible with accurate data on the disease.”

 And how to get the data on the disease? By first and foremost identifying the sick among us to cut the chain of transmission, a task made difficult considering that the infected may not necessarily look sick or exhibit symptoms. To use the words of a WHO official, to test, test, test.

 Quarantine alone won’t work. No one can stay home indefinitely. We all need to go out at some point–for food, for work, and to pick up where we left off.

 Testing is so important that the WHO is urging governments to ‘get the capacity’ or to test, test, test no matter what. No doubt the highest officials of our government have also come to this conclusion. President Duterte has had himself tested and Bong Go as well, this despite both not exhibiting symptoms.

 The president’s partner and his teenage daughter, too, have been tested. And so have Senator Francis Tolentino, Bangko Sentral head Ben Diokno, and secretaries Tugade, Villar, and Dominguez.

 But this is where this gets disheartening. The Department of Health (DOH) has admitted that it has far, far, far fewer kits than it needs to test the country’s 100 million-plus citizens. As late as May 9, the DOH said it had only 2,000 kits even as infections across the country continue to multiply. It later said the country is getting additional kits from South Korea and China and local sources. But all these are not nearly enough to mount mass testing similar to what was done or is being done by South Korea.

 This is why the DOH has adopted a ‘decision tool’ to prioritize who can be tested. Under this tool, individuals are categorized as either persons under investigation (PUI) or persons under monitoring (PUM).

 The bottom line is: unless the symptoms you are manifesting are severe unless you are categorized as elderly with symptoms, or unless you have underlying medical conditions, you will not get tested.

 Of course, all these protocols are unnecessary if you are one of Duterte’s pals. Look at Bong Go who, by the way, did not think twice about mingling, along with some celebrities from Manila, with masses of people in Butuan despite a government directive banning all mass gatherings.

 By the way, it may be worth mentioning to Mr. Go that a negative result does not and will not protect him. A test is not a vaccine.

 So there has been no mass testing to date akin to South Korea’s (which, incidentally, has so far carried out more than 285,000 tests—the equivalent of 5,500 tests for every one million South Koreans). Worse, the Metro Manila ‘lockdown’ last week drove masses of people fleeing to the provinces.

 LGUs have automatically declared those who came from the national capital (where most of the cases were initially) as PUMs. And given that individuals can be infected and not show symptoms, LGUs have advised them to go on self-quarantine.

 The consequence of all these is that the national government has effectively appointed the LGUs and hence, the barangays, to do the heavy lifting in this crisis of epic proportions. Unfortunately, we all know too well that barangays, or LGUs for that matter, are not created equal. Some are lucky to have capable and dedicated leaders, others are stuck with schmucks. Some are rich, others poor. One is the President’s hometown, others merely are among the rest.

 So what happens come April 14? Not all of us will get infected at the same time, not all of us will recover, or will have died by April 14. Some of us may find ourselves restarting our lives. Some may find themselves under heavy guard, their communities under lockdown.