WHEN we consider the figures on COVID-19 infections and deaths around the world, we must be thankful that our own cases in the Philippines are so much lower.
France last Monday became the fourth country to cross the threshold of 20,000 deaths, joining Italy (24,114), Spain (20,852), and the United States (more than 41,000). And these figures keep changing every day. A day later, Tuesday, the number of deaths in the US reached 42,921 – out of 816,240 cases. The global death toll had reached 175,812 out of 2,046,527 cases.
In the Philippines, the number of confirmed cases totaled 6,599 as of Tuesday, with 437 deaths. There were also 654 recoveries.
The whole of Luzon, including Metro Manila, remains under lockdown – “enhanced community quarantine” (ECQ), to use the official term – while the rest of the Philippines is under a state of calamity. Our early declaration of ECQ may have helped keep down our COVID-19 infections and deaths, along with the archipelagic nature of our country, with wide seas separating our over 7,000 islands.
The World Health Organization, however, has expressed concern over one statistic – 13 percent of the country’s healthcare workers have contracted the virus. In contrast, WHO said, only two or three percent of healthcare workers got infected in other countries of the region, including South Korea, Australia, and Japan. This could be due to shortage of inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) or inadequate training, or our healthcare system was simply overwhelmed, WHO Western Pacific COVID-19 incident manager Abdi Mahamud said.
It has been 40 days since the start of the Metro Manila-Luzon lockdown on March 15 – a good month before some US states started their own lockdowns. Our lockdown – with the people accepting social distancing and taking to the use of face masks – has surely helped to reduce the COVID-19 infections and deaths in this country.
At the end of this month, we will begin a gradual reopening of the economy. The lockdown has saved many lives, but it has had economic costs. Many industries and businesses have closed down, many families have lost their income for six weeks, and possibly employment.
But we should be grateful that we have fared so much better than some other countries – notably Italy, Spain, France, and the United States. And we hope that in the coming weeks and months, we will see a further improvement in the world COVID-19 situation, with the discovery and development of cures and vaccines that will finally end this pandemic.
