No more extension

The two day-old year 2023 is off to an auspicious start. International economists, though, have earlier alerted us about a global recession in the horizon all over the world. With that in mind perhaps, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) begins the new year with a risky mission to push the country’s international engagements. He starts with a state visit to China even when COVID-related deaths there are still rising at pandemic level.

Accompanied by wife, First Lady Lisa Araneta-Marcos, PBBM will fly tomorrow to Beijing along with key government officials led by Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and key Cabinet members. In a pre-departure press briefing last week, Malacañang assuaged the public that the President and the entire Philippine delegation will stay in a “bubble” during the state visit from Jan. 3 to 5.

The so-called “bubble” should be able to protect them – to a certain degree. It should help prevent them also from bringing back to our country whatever COVID-19 strain that is still killing many people in Beijing and other parts of China. The “bubble” is similar to a quarantine or isolation of non-infected persons staying together. If still somebody gets infected among them, the disease is not transmitted elsewhere but stays within the “bubble.” Thus, this set up breaks the transmission chain to the entire population.

This was done in the past in the PBA basketball games held in a “bubble” set-up in a sports arena in Angeles City, Pampanga in Sept. 2020. It was during the height of the pandemic here in our country when then President Rodrigo Duterte enforced a nationwide lockdown like what some countries did to prevent the spread of the pandemic.

Here’s a “Marites” story. We were made to believe ex-Pres. Duterte did not get sick of COVID-19 during his watch. A little Malacañang Palace birdie chirped that the former Chief Executive who suffers with a number of comorbidity ailments was quietly hospitalized in May this year for COVID-related pneumonia.

“I think only a few of us knew about it,” revealed one of those among the inner circle of high-ranking government officials who kept this top secret. The erstwhile Commander-in-chief was rushed to a medical center near Malacañang in San Miguel, Manila. The 77-year old Mr. Duterte suffered a slight case of pneumonia. China-made anti-COVID vaccines Sinopharm and booster shot apparently worked for him.

PBBM himself twice got infected with COVID-19. The first time was in March 2020 when he fell ill from a COVID-related pneumonia after he arrived from Spain. Presumably, this was the Wuhan strain of the COVID-19 infection that spread here in the Philippines at that time while the Sinovac and Pfizer anti-COVID vaccines were coming in trickles.

At his inaugural speech on June 30, the freshly minted PBBM recalled his COVID-19 experience. “I was among the first to get COVID. It was not a walk in the park,” the President admitted.

The second time was in July 8 last year when he tested positive again of COVID-19 infection. This was more than a week after the whirlwind of official and ceremonial functions that PBBM attended upon assumption of office at Malacañang. An official statement of the Palace was that PBBM only suffered “mild fever” and underwent “isolation” while recuperating. He went back to work at the Palace a week later.

Luckily for him, too, the 65-year old PBBM had already undergone his primary vaccine and booster shot.

Amid calls for the Philippine government to reimpose travel restrictions on travellers coming from China, the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) released a video message where the President frowned upon the idea of reimposing a total travel ban to and fro of China.

“But if it’s something that is manageable, then I’m sure we can find a way to not completely close our borders to China but to find a way to have a procedure so that those coming from China who may have been exposed or who may have been infected will be tested and that’s our only concern,” he added. Given the presidential parameters, the Department of Health (DOH) issued on Dec. 31 amended Quarantine guidelines on entry of travelers from China.

Likewise, PBBM doused cold waters to the DOH recommendation to further extend the state of calamity in the Philippines due to COVID-19. Four days before it lapsed on Dec. 31, DOH officer-in-charge (OIC) undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire announced having submitted a draft memorandum for this to the President. Vergeire disclosed she had a meeting about this with Malacañang officials, together with other officials of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF).

Ex-President Duterte first declared a state of calamity due to COVID-19 on March 16, 2020. It was subsequently extended six months and extended anew until Sept. 25 last year. Before it could lapse, PBBM extended this up to end of 2022. The DOH justified extending the state of calamity to allow them to still grant emergency use authorization to vaccines and medicines for COVID-19 and to give extra benefits to frontline healthcare workers.

PBBM argued that the government is still trying to find ways to continue providing benefits to healthcare workers without a state of calamity declaration. “I’m still very, very hesitant to continue the state of calamity, to extend it because again we are not in a state of calamity anymore, technically speaking. And that is the wrong mindset to be approaching the new year with,” the President declared in the same OPS video release.

Vergeire, however, believes the DOH concerns could be addressed only after the 19th Congress passes into law the pending bill that seeks to create the Philippine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But this will have to wait until lawmakers resume their sessions on Jan. 16 yet.

But there was no more extension of the state of calamity that lapsed with the year 2022. The President though extended the appointments of designated OICs in all government offices, including Vergeire.