"I hope that lessons learned from this undertaking will now be translated into simple protocols which the Task Force nCoV can disseminate in a proper, responsible and wide manner."
"I hope that lessons learned from this undertaking will now be translated into simple protocols which the Task Force nCoV can disseminate in a proper, responsible and wide manner."Last Saturday, the Department of Foreign Affairs was supposed to have started the repatriation of the first batch of Filipinos from Wuhan City in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the 2019 novel corona virus (nCoV). Consisting of 56 persons—45 Filipinos, seven spouses of different nationalities and four children—they were to land at the Clark International Airport in Pampanga to be immediately put on a 14-day quarantine at the New Athletes Village in Capas, Tarlac. This will be the first major movement of persons under observation (PUOs) from Wuhan and should give us a window into our own capacity to handle this now globally spreading virus.
Just an aside. I think it is better we consider those being quarantined or those suspected to be affected by n-CoV as PUOs instead of PUIs (persons under investigation) as has been the usual PUIs since, as one caller in our regular radio program opined, the latter term has a criminal tinge into it. Which is just as well since those being quarantined are just collateral damage to this increasingly deadly outbreak. But that will be another story.
In any event, for a while there, Capas municipal officials made a big issue over the designation of the the newly constructed village as the quarantine station. In fact, the latest report we gathered is that the municipal council is poised to file a petition in court seeking a temporary injunction over this medical assignment. They should be told to stand down. While we recognize the apprehensions which these officials may have noting that the athletic village is surrounded by a number of barangays many of whose residents work at the village as cleaners, sweepers and gardeners, among others, there really is no immediate danger to their well being. But—and this is a big, big “but”—the personnel from the Task force nCoV headed by the DoH should take time to ensure that such apprehensions are addressed properly and responsibly.
This NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) mindset, an understandable scare actually, was borne out of sheer ignorance about this new virus. It would not have even emerged at all had the DoH taken time and effort to come out with the simplest of information and protocol addressing this matter from the time it got into the scene last December. Sadly, the department did not even take the steps necessary to prepare and communicate to the public the whats, whys, and wherefores of the nCoV since it was flagged. And when the department finally did move, the air was already swirling with all kinds of “news” including pseudo prescriptions on what to do that made things toxic to say the least. To make matters worse, the information coming out of the DoH and eventually other agencies were so mixed up, a kind of gobbledygook that it took the WHO and a handful of doctors, specially Dr. Bien Manlutac, to calm things down. And so we now have some sort of road map, so to speak, on how the entire nCoV prevention protocol should be carried out.
Thus, this first rescue flight duly worked out by a team of DoH and,yes, DFA personnel, the “Brave 5”, as the DoH team has been tagged with a DFA contingent of three, thus our heading “The Brave 5 plus Three” for which the country owes a deep sense of appreciation. But in addition to them, we should commend the two Foreign Service personnel based in Shanghai, Mark Anthony Geguerra and Sanny Darren Bejarin, who had earlier coordinated with Wuhan authorities and volunteers from the Filipino community in Wuhan to provide food, clothing and other necessities to the 300 or so Filipinos caught in that city’s lockdown. Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Brigido Dulay noted that these officers and the kind souls in the community did a commendable job like the team of experienced volunteers flying with the evacuees via a the chartered Royal Air plane.
Health Undersecretary Gerard Bayugo emphasized that the “Brave 5 plus Three” team was supposed to take care of all embarkation and disembarkation requirements including liaison with the Chinese authorities until the transport of the batch of fifty six to the quarantine station in Capas. The all volunteer team was headed by Dr. Neptali Labasan, a medical officer assigned to the DoH-Bureau of Quarantine, and composed of Dr. Oliver Macalinao (San Lorenzo Ruiz hospital); nurses Rowell Divinagracia (Philippine Heart center) and Jay Julian (DoH-Bureau of Health Emergency) and medical technologist Elmer Collong (Philippine Heart Center) are all experienced in this kind of undertaking. The DFA Three which accompanied the medical team have yet to be identified but as Dulay noted they also volunteered and are experienced hands.
So strict are the protocols for the operation that even before the group was supposed to have been allowed out of China they had to be subjected to a series of tests by the Chinese authorities themselves. Thus, they will be assessed first before boarding and if they have been found to have symptoms of the virus they were not allowed to board. Instead, they were to be taken to a hospital in Wuhan. The last we heard all of the 56 persons were allowed to leave. The same protocol was established in Clark and Capas.
Which should give one and all, specially the residents of the Capas barangays near the quarantine station, a modicum of assurance about the handling of the quarantine operations. But, as we have been saying all along, this is just the beginning of a, hopefully, not-so-drawn-out operation involving the quarantine of a batch of persons, not just travelling individuals, from which we can finally come out with lessons to assist us in allaying the fears, biases and prejudices of the public at large. Hopefully, lessons learned from this undertaking will now be translated into simple protocols which the Task Force nCoV can disseminate in as proper, responsible and wide a manner as possible to get the entire country on the ball. So we can finally move on.
