‘DOH chief must teach Pinoys to live with COVID-19’

MANILA, Philippines — The next secretary of the Department of Health (DOH) that President Marcos will appoint should help Filipinos learn to live with COVID-19 to boost the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic, senators said yesterday.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III and Sen. Sonny Angara spoke on the issue as Marcos has yet to appoint a permanent health secretary after more than 100 days in office.

Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire currently heads the DOH as officer-in-charge.

Pimentel said if the President really wants the country to move away from the health emergency and open up the economy, “then he should appoint his ‘alter ego’ as head of the DOH.”

“Someone who shares the same thinking he (Marcos) just explained. Get an outsider if necessary. But show and shower him or her with all the support for us to be able to ‘live with the virus’,” he added.

Angara said he agreed with Marcos in weaning Filipinos away from the state of health emergency mindset.

“Because we may be inadvertently sending the wrong message by maintaining a state of emergency, when other countries have been quick to communicate that things have gone back to normal,” Angara added.

He said bringing the country back to normal does not mean Filipinos should be lax in abiding by health protocols and that the Philippines must communicate to foreign tourists that it is OK to visit the country where the situation has improved.

Marcos on Thursday said he has yet to appoint a permanent chief of the DOH because the country has to move away from COVID-19 emergency and businesses have to be opened up.

“We have to get away from the emergency, the emergency stance of the DOH because we have to open up businesses. We have to make the Philippines more hospitable to travelers, both business and tourists,” Marcos said during a media interview following his speech at the 48th Philippine Business Conference and Exposition organized by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Manila Hotel.

“And it does not help if we are still under a state of calamity, if we are the only country that still has a mask protocol. But these are mandated to us by the laws that were passed during the pandemic,” he said.

He said running the DOH is not about structural changes, but the method of handling the pandemic.

The government, he said, should start treating COVID-19 not as an emergency but as something that has to be managed in the long term like flu and pneumonia.