By ARGYLL CYRUS B. GEDUCOS
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Malacañang urged people with mild and asymptomatic COVID-19 cases to voluntarily submit themselves to isolation facilities, saying it would be like a “paid-for vacation” due to the government’s “excellent facilities.”
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque made the statement after Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said the policemen and local government personnel will be going house-to-house to search for COVID-19 cases who should not be on home quarantine.
In an interview with ANC, Roque said the government has no provision to go knocking on every door and that only the critics of the administration are weaponizing the important task of tracing and isolation.
“They (authorities) will not go house-to-house, they (COVID-19 patients) will have to be reported by the individuals themselves, their family, or the barangay. There is a law, which is RA 11332 which says that you have to report communicable diseases.
Republic Act No. 11332 is the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act.
IT’S A VACATION
Roque, instead, urged the mild and asymptomatic COVID-19 cases to “surrender” and confine themselves in isolation centers that are air-conditioned, free lodging, free meals throughout the day, free Wi-Fi access, and a graduation ceremony once their quarantine is completed.
There will also be doctors and nurses to attend to their needs while under quarantine.
“We’re trying precisely to entice them with excellent facilities. It’s a paid-for vacation with [an] air-conditioned facility,” Roque said.
“It’s not as if they are brought to jails. They look like hotels! So it’s not as if they will be sent to solitary confinement. But there’s no other way,” he added.
According to Roque, the said patients cannot refuse to be brought to isolation facilities since public health is the government’s priority.
“It’s a very communicable disease and if they refuse to be isolated the State, of course, can isolate them,” he said.
“The legal basis to bring the asymptomatics and the mild cases without isolation facilities or with vulnerables living with them is still the inherent police power of the State. This is still [the] promotion of public health,” he added.
Roque said that all governments in the world can place a patient under quarantine to prevent the spread of the disease.
“So let’s not make a big issue out of it especially now that we know that studies already indicate that this virus may have already mutated and is even more contagious!” he said.
