Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto said on Tuesday, March 15, that he aims to fully implement a universal healthcare system in the city if he is re-elected for the mayoral position in the May 2022 elections.

“In the next two to three years, our goal is to really fully implement universal healthcare just like we planned before the pandemic came,” Sotto said in an interview with One News when he was asked what else he can do for his city in reference to his re-election bid.

Sotto noted that many of the Pasig's healthcare capacities were retrofitted to adjust to the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thus, the city’s material and human resources were restricted and unable to address other non-Covid issues, the mayor said.

“Dahil sa Covid, kinailangan natin mag-convert ng ospital para maging referral center, nagtaas tayo ng bed capacity from 60 plus to almost 200. Nagtayo tayo ng molecular laboratory para mas mabilis ang turn-around ng PCR tests sa Pasig. Nagtayo tayo ng contact tracing center, nagtayo tayo ng centralized quarantine facility, at marami pang iba para lang sa Covid (Because of Covid, we needed to convert our hospital into a referral center, increase our bed capacity from 60 plus to almost 200. We built a molecular laboratory to hasten the turn-around of PCR tests in Pasig. We also built a contact tracing center, a centralized quarantine facility and many others just for Covid),” Sotto said.

Sotto said the emergence of the Delta variant was one of the most difficult challenges that he experienced as a first-term mayor.

However, by adopting a proactive mindset and concentrating their healthcare resources on Covid-19 response as early as 2020, the city was able to cope and overcome both the surge of the Delta and Omicron variants.

“Naturally some of our other long-term plans for the implementation of universal healthcare have been delayed a little bit. Hindi ibig sabihin na walang nagawa kasi malaki parin ‘yung progreso...Big progress has been made but not quite the progress we envisioned at the start of 2019 (Naturally some of our other long-term plans for the implementation of universal healthcare have been delayed a little bit. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t do anything because there has been significant progress...Big progress has been made but not quite the progress we envisioned at the start of 2019),” Sotto said.

The mayor cited the implementation of the “no balance billing” initiative of PhilHealth as one of the programs that have been gradually developed.

The Pasig city local government has allotted funds in support of the initiative to shoulder the expenses that patients will incur during their period of confinement in public hospitals within the city.

Following the widespread decline of Covid-19 cases in Metro Manila, Pasig City logged 45 active Covid-19 cases, 79, 069 recoveries, and 1, 574 deaths as of Monday, March 14.