The heartbreaking stories of commuters never end. Two weeks ago, I came across the story of five men with disabilities who were refused transportation and had to maneuver their way from Tarlac to Manila on their wheelchairs. Then there was the highly covered ordeal of stranded individuals who wanted to go home to their respective provinces and sought temporary shelter in the Rizal Stadium but were asked to leave on the eve of the Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) reversion.
Last August 4, President Rodrigo Duterte placed Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna back to the stricter MECQ. This was in response to the unified call of health professionals for a timeout – not so they can all take vacation leaves – but to slow down the exponential spread of the virus that is ravaging families and communities. Such announcement was dropped on us and government agencies were given 24 hours to adjust and make it work. There was no clear communications clarifying if the new MECQ is similar to the one previously had. There were little to no instructions on how LGUs should come up with interventions to support their people financially and logistically, with mass transport again put on hold, and with many workers left clueless on how to go to work for the next two weeks.
Our family had its own bouts of MECQ struggles as my sister-in-law Norie, who tested positive for Covid-19, had to wait for two days outside a hospital in Las Pinas in a makeshift tent due lack of rooms. On top of worrying about the state of health of our loved ones, we were left with the arduous task of fending for our own interventions given the hospitals in Metro Manila are at full capacity, with only a handful accepting new patients. But the shortage in rooms, delays in testing, and tales of overwhelmed health professionals who requested for a timeout are something to be tackled probably in another column.
For now, let me tell you about the travails of moving a Covid patient to another hospital during MECQ. Stringent protocols are in place when transporting a patient from one hospital to another. Because of my sister-in-law’s highly infectious state, she cannot be transported by a private car, with her first hospital requiring an ambulance to move her to the new hospital where we luckily found an available room. Unfortunately, the former hospitals’ only ambulance was being used to shuttle their frontliners to and from work because mass transportation has once again been halted due to MECQ.
San Juan City has responded to this need by offering free rides for all city medical frontliners as the city’s way of thanking them for their service. Mayor Francis Zamora said the city hall bus will be used to ferry and fetch the medical front liners in going to work and back due to the suspension of public transport under MECQ in Metro Manila. The Office of the Vice President has resumed their shuttle service for the frontliners. And even private companies like Angkas are offering a similar service to employees of partner hospitals. Meanwhile, Las Pinas City, which has a bigger income than San Juan, does not offer their health workers the same privilege. It is for this reason why the we had to outsource an ambulance with our own efforts and resources.
Today, I closely monitor the news on how the Department of Health and PhilHealth are under scrutiny by the Office of the Ombudsman on how the billions of pesos allotted for the country’s pandemic response were spent. Had that amount been utilized efficiently, hospitals like the one in Las Pinas where my sister-in-law could not be accommodated could have provided her with a decent bed or quarantine quarters. They could have facilitated an easier transfer arrangement from their hospital to another, as it should be, and allow us to attend to other family members who were also admitted to the hospital because of Covid-19. It was tone deaf of PCOO Secretary Martin Andanar to proudly announce that the government has prepared the Philippine Program for Recovery with Equity and Solidarity to aid the sectors severely affected by the pandemic in 2021. That is months away from now. In the meantime, the clock is ticking, with lives gone by the minute. We have lost two family members, with three others in the hospital fighting for their lives because of this virulent virus. The two-week MECQ is almost up with no significant improvement in the cases. While the economy can repair itself eventually, will we just wait and let our families be wiped out totally?
The author may be reached at [email protected].