Duque: PH’s initial COVID-19 response is ‘slow, if not lagging’, but ‘revealing’

MANILA – Health Secretary Francisco Duque III acknowledged on Friday that the country’s response to COVID-19 was far from ideal when the pandemic began.

“I know that COVID-19 has revealed fissures, cracks and gaps in the Philippine healthcare system, but that was a revelation,” Duque said during a virtual event with the MVP Group of Companies on Friday.

And I’ll be the first to admit that our initial response was quite slow, if not lagging. Why? Because nobody really expected this pandemic. . . The whole world got down on its knees trying to manage its COVID pandemics in every country, almost without exception, ”he said.

The health chief said this when speaking about the “valuable learning points” of the pandemic and how it could “become an accelerator of universal health care.”

Duque was criticized for his comment that the COVID-19 outbreak was a “blessing in disguise” because it accelerated implementation of the universal health care law, but the Health Department spokesman said it was not intended to offend.

During Friday’s event, Duque said there were many “valuable learning points when COVID-19 hit the country,” including how it has served as “an accelerator of universal healthcare.”

He listed how the pandemic forced the country to increase its labs running polymerase chain reaction tests for COVID-19 from just one to more than a hundred now.

He also noted that he pressured the country to increase the requirements of health professionals and establish 160,000 temporary treatment and monitoring facilities.

“If it weren’t for this COVID-19, I don’t think we would have really been able to achieve a much faster pace (of implementation of) these provisions of the universal health care law. It’s not all bad news, ”he said.

As of Friday, there have been a total of 252,964 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, of which 62,250 are active or still infected. While the 4,108 deaths are considered low compared to the world average, the Philippines has the highest number of confirmed cases in Southeast Asia.