We have been wearing face masks for almost three years now, since the World Health Organization had declared Covid-19 as a pandemic in March 2020.
With that, we had followed social distancing and hand washing as minimum health and safety protocols to prevent the spread of the virus, in compliance with the order of the Inter Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), the government agency created to lead the fight against Covid-19.
Through all that time, we had lived through various lockdowns and restrictions to our movements. The government had acted on situations that showed an increase in the number of Covid cases, built isolation facilities around the country, established a centralized hospital system, and even deployed soldiers in areas where residents defied the “stay-at-home” order.
We have gone a long way in a united fight to stop the spread of Covid-19, through the inconveniences – and the grief –that came along. Travelers followed the list of required documents and procedures which required much time and also money to complete. Business establishments struggled through the time when there were no customers, yet there were employees to pay. Workers searched for other sources of income to augment pay cuts or retrenchment.
The list of situations we went through to get here, 30 months later, is long. Going through that list, we realize that we followed the government’s guidance and policies because we wanted to stop Covid from taking more lives, and from making life more difficult with the related problems that soon came at its heels – hunger, unemployment, lack of education.
Of course there were situations where people disagreed on how we should fight the virus. The number of days in isolation was one of them, a situation that soured relations between provincial and local government units, and eventually confused the residents. Another was the proposal to require a vax card to enter public establishments, even public transportation.
Vaccination was one of the more serious issues that “divided the house,” in a manner of speaking. Anti-vaxxers cried discrimination to proposals to make vaccination mandatory, while the pro group raised the health safety flag.
We hurdled all those issues through thorough discussions backed by scientific studies, best practices cases in other parts of the world, and of course, assessment of local conditions.
With a strong political will, and the dedication of local government units, we got the vaccination program going recording over 72.6 million individuals completing the two vaccination doses (National Covid-19 Vaccination Dashboard). But with immunity waning, booster shots have been recorded at only over 18.1 million as of Sept. 2, 2022, a low number that does not give us a strong “wall of immunity,” health experts say.
Government authorities are now tangled in another discussion on two views on the use of face masks: The Department of Health said it is still mandatory as declared by the IATF as a one-nation approach to fighting Covid. Meanwhile, the Cebu City LGU has Executive Order No. 5 “An order declaring the use of face mask within the territorial jurisdiction of the City of Cebu as non-obligatory, but a measure of individual self-preservation and protection.”
Like other past issues related to Covid that came with two sides, we hope that the issue on the wearing of masks, which give 70-80 percent protection, will find a united solution soon.