Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte wants the Department of Health (DOH), the Interagency Task Force on the Management of Infectious Diseases (IATF) and the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF) to give updates on the projects supposed to have been funded under the Bayanihan To Recover As One Act (Bayanihan 2) to contain the prolonged pandemic.
Villafuerte called on these offices to report the status of projects ostensibly funded by the Congress under Bayanihan 2, such as those for the establishment of temporary treatment and monitoring facilities (TTMFs) and the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPEs), face masks and other medical supplies necessary to curb the spread of Covid-19.
“These offices owe it to the public and to legislators to account for the funds that were set aside last year by the Congress under Bayanihan 2 to beef up the country’s healthcare capacity, especially now when the alarming surge in Covid-19 infections threatens to overwhelm both our medical frontliners and healthcare infrastructure,” he said.
“We urge these offices to report to the Congress the status of these funds, which is mandated under Bayanihan 2 or Republic Act (RA) No. 11494. With the extension of the validity of the available Bayanihan 2 appropriations under RA 11519, these offices should take the initiative to continue reporting on what have been accomplished thus far with the Covid-related budgetary outlays,” said Villafuerte, who principally authored both the Bayanihan 1 (RA 11469) and Bayanihan 2 laws as well as RA 11519 extending the validity of Bayanihan 2 appropriations until June 30 this year.
Villafuerte wants to find out, in particular, the status of the fund releases and implementation of the P4.5-billion appropriations under Bayanihan 2 for the construction and maintenance of isolation facilities, including the billings of hotels, food and transportation used for the Covid-19 response and recovery program by the Office of Civil Defense (OCD).
Under the law’s regular appropriations, Villafuerte said the government should also provide an update on the P13.5 billion allocated for health-related responses ( e.g. continuous employment and additional human resource for health (HRH), DOH hospitals operations, special risk allowance for public and private healthcare workers(HCW), hazard pay, free life insurance and other benefits, and the P3 billion set aside for the procurement of face masks, PPE, shoe covers and other necessary medical supplies for health frontliners.
Villafuerte wants to find out, in particular, the status of the fund releases and implementation of the P4.5-billion appropriations under Bayanihan 2 for the construction and maintenance of isolation facilities, including the billings of hotels, food and transportation used for the Covid-19 response and recovery program by the Office of Civil Defense (OCD).
Villafuerte also called on the DOH to report on its use of its P10-billion appropriation under Bayanihan 2 for the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines.
“How many vaccines are we supposed to purchase with the P10-billion DOH allocation? How many TTMFs were set up so far? How many PPEs and other medical supplies did we procure? How much was the amount already released for the special risk allowance of our medical frontliners?” stressed Villafuerte.
Under Bayanihan 2, regular appropriations account for P140 billion, with another P25 billion as standby fund.
“We would also like to find out if any funds have been cascaded to the LGUs (local government units) for the construction of TTMFs. In the case of Camarines Sur we were able to set up our own facility by converting a medical school into a TTMF using funds from the provincial government, but none from the national government using the appropriations under Bayanihan 2,” he said.
Villafuerte underscored the need for LGUs to establish additional TTMFs and other medical equipment necessary to curb the spread of Covid-19, especially with this latest surge in infections reported mostly in the National Capital Region (NCR) and its adjacent provinces belonging to the so-called “NCR Plus” bubble.
According to DOH data, the coronavirus has–as of April 7—sickened 819,164 people in the country and caused the death of 14,059 of them.
Villafuerte said the government should complement its extended enhance community quarantine (ECQ) in NCR and the neighboring provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal with a more aggressive strategy to detect, isolate and treat infected people while it awaits the arrival of the bulk of the ordered anti-virus jabs for its vaccine rollout plan.
Villafuerte also called on the DOH to report on its use of its P10-billion appropriation under Bayanihan 2 for the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines.
He earlier welcomed the new government target of conducting 90,000 to 100,000 Covid-19 tests per day via the combined use of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid antigen tests, in light of the infection surge since mid-March.
Villafuerte had called on the NTF and IATF to green-light the use of antigen testing not only in ‘NCR Plus” areas but in all other parts of the country as well, to improve the testing, detection, tracing and treatment capabilities of all LGUs.
He stressed the urgency for the government to ramp up its mass testing as he pointed to a recent World Bank assessment report that the Philippines’ reliance on long lockdowns in lieu of a test-based strategy at the onset of the pandemic was responsible for its continued economic slowdown at a time when other economies in the region have started to recover.
Rapid antigen testing is a relatively inexpensive test in both point-of-care and laboratory settings to detect the SARS-CoV02 virus that is responsible for Covid-19. Test results are available in about 15 minutes, compared to the costlier RT-PCR whose turnaround time usually takes 2-3 days.
Villafuerte pointed out that countries such as the United States (US), Canada, Italy, France and Germany have turned to the faster and cheaper antigen tests to avoid the undue delays in efforts to detect, trace and treat Covid-infected people.
He has likewise called on the NTF to conduct rapid antigen testing of people entering and leaving the “NCR Plus” bubble as a more effective test-based strategy to contain the quick spread of the coronavirus and its more infectious variants amid the alarming spike in caseload that now threatens to overwhelm our medical front-liners and healthcare facilities.
Villafuerte proposed that the NTF headed by vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. coordinate with the elective officials of the concerned LGUs in putting up testing stations in all border checkpoints in the “NCR Plus” bubble, which has been placed under ECQ for another week till April 11.
He said “the rapid testing of travelers would enable the NTF, DILG (Department of Interior and Local Government) and other agencies to immediately detect, hold and then send to quarantine facilities for treatment those found positive for the coronavirus, rather than allow these infected travelers to cross borders and possibly infect people they come in close contact with along their trips and in their places of destination.”
The DILG earlier said that various state agencies would allot 18,000 more contact tracers combined as the government targets to locate people exposed to Covid-19 patients within 24 hours, as it intensifies its “prevent, detect, isolate, treat and reintegrate” (PDITR) strategy in the ‘NCR Plus’ bubble.
“Emphasis should be on testing those leaving the bubble, given that ‘NCR Plus’ is the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in the Philippines that accounts for about two-thirds of total infections,” he said.
According to DOH data, there were 138,948 active infections in the country as of April 1, with those in “NCR Plus’ accounting for 100,298 or 72% of the cases.
Villafuerte said the government should complement its extended ECQ in “NCR Plus” with a more aggressive strategy to detect, isolate and treat infected people while it awaits the arrival of the bulk of the ordered anti-virus jabs for its vaccine rollout plan.
“Expanded testing is our best shot at preventing future infection surges and containing the pandemic, especially with the advent of more transmissible Covid-19 variants,” he said.
He said that using rapid antigen test kits in border checkpoints to detect the infected people among outgoing and incoming travelers in the “NCR Plus” bubble is ideal, considering that it is relatively cheaper and faster, with results available in just 15 minutes after the tests are done.
Villafuerte said there has not been any unusual infection surge in Camarines Sur partly because provincial officials had been using rapid antigen kits to test some 50,000 incoming travelers since June last year.
Those infected are immediately separated and sent to be treated in any of Camarines Sur’s over a dozen isolation and treatment facilities, before they are eventually allowed to go home, he said.