Robredo tells gov’t to heed doctors’ call during ECQ


Vice President Leni Robredo called on the government to listen to doctors’ recommendation to use the one-week enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) to successfully manage the surge in coronavirus cases in the country. 

“Iyong mga recommendations ng mga doctor ay sana matugunan (We should heed the recommendations of the doctors,” Robredo said Sunday, March 28, over dzXL.

The Healthcare Professionals Alliance Against COVID-19, which was formed to unify the voices of medical professionals in a bid to come up with an evidence-based approach to fight COVID-19, came up with a list of recommendations for the government during the ECQ period from March 29 to April 4.

Malacañang placed the National Capital Region, Bulacan, Laguna, Cavite, and Rizal under ECQ, the most restrictive of the community quarantine levels, because of the surge in confirmed positive cases.

Robredo echoed their statement about expanding the One Hospital Command Center, which was launched last year by the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on COVID-19 Response as a centralized hospital occupancy monitoring system. 

“Kasi karamihan sa natatanggap namin na mga request wala talagang mapuntahan, naghihintay sila ng hospitalization. Maraming kalituhan dito. Maraming umiikot sa hospital. Ang dami talagang ngayon naghahanap ng hospitalization (Many of the requests we are getting, they have nowhere to go, they are waiting for hospitalization. There is a lot of confusion here. A lot are making rounds of hospitals. There are a lot now looking for hospitalization),” Robredo added. 

The second recommendation is to establish field hospitals that can offer services even to mild cases of COVID-19 patients who are being treated at home. 

Robredo said the patients will feel assured knowing that health care professionals are looking after them.

Third, the vice president raised the possibility of augmenting the health personnel capacity of areas with high COVID-19 transmission rates from other provinces since there is now a lack of health care personnel in hospitals.

“Kailangan bang mag-aya na tayo from the provinces, pati gamit? Kailangan na bang humiram muna tayo doon sa lugar na meron silang sobra? Ito ‘yun mga dapat asikasuhin during the ECQ (Do we need to get from the provinces, including equipment? Do we need to borrow from other places that have a surplus? These are the things that they should take care of during the ECQ),” Robredo said.

The vice president stressed the government needs to ramp up its testing and capacitate local government units (LGUs), which is the government’s “strongest link” during this pandemic.

“The LGUs need help because there are a lot of things that only the national government has capacity. For me, this week, let’s look at the capacities of the LGUs,” she said in Filipino.

If they are lacking, the government should provide the support that they need. 

Finally, the opposition leader said the group of doctors is also recommending having a single repository of data where the government can easily manage the whole COVID-19 response operations. 

“We hope they can heed these recommendations because these are going to be helpful,” Robredo said.

On March 26, the Philippines logged its highest tally of COVID-19 cases at 9,838 with a positivity rate of 17.3 percent.