The Department of Health (DOH) announced today that medical workers from other areas will be deployed to Metro Manila to help its hospitals in their fight against COVID-19.
Prior to this, President Rodrigo Duterte announced the return of the National Capital Region to the stricter modified enhanced community quarantine to give healthcare workers a “time out” from the deluge of COVID-19 patients. At the same time, Duterte lambasted the medical workers for “not doing anything but complain” in the face of the pandemic and for planning to stage a “revolution.”
Read: Duterte scolds health experts for trying to ‘demean’ gov’t, claims they’re ‘not doing anything’
In a virtual presser today, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said they plan to bring DOH workers from regional offices to Metro Manila to give health workers here a few days to rest.
“We need to make a substitution team so that our colleagues, these healthcare workers in the National Capital Region, can rest. [W]e have colleagues in DOH regional offices and hospitals who will come here in the National Capital Region to help. We will also announce to private healthcare professionals in other parts of the Philippines [to ask them to come here] and help us,” she said in English and Filipino.
She added that the government will continue to trace, test, and isolate suspected COVID-19 patients. It would also meet with the organization Alliance of Healthcare Professionals to consult on how the government could come up with a “recalibrated strategy” to better respond to the pandemic.
Speaking to Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque, Vergeire added, “If you’re asking if we are winning against the pandemic, we are managing it. We are preparing our healthcare system so that we could accommodate more patients so we can appropriately address the situation.”
The Philippine government has been called out for its lack of a comprehensive plan in battling the coronavirus, which has infected at least 100,000 people. In comparison, other Southeast Asian nations such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam have have managed to control the spread of COVID-19.
