Ma. Joelle E.

Valladolid
ABM 12- Accountability

Government’s Response to Covid-19

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, has spread

globally since its first report in Wuhan, China on December 31, 2019. On January 30,

the Philippines reported its first two imported cases of COVID-19 in a couple from

Wuhan. It became the biggest threat to the global community, challenging governments,

health systems, and institutions to effectively respond to it. But with good governance,

most countries will be able to recover with it eventually. However, the country of

Philippines is taking a longer time to fully adjust and recover from the damages the virus

has done. This is due to the horrible leadership of their government which is under

Duterte’s administration. The government of the Philippines has shown their

incompetence, slow response and lack of accountability multiple times which hinder the

country to move forward from the crisis.

Going back to where it all began, the spread of Corona Virus in the Philippines

started due to the lack of actions of the government. They seemed unalarmed and was

extremely slow to respond with the virus and its deadly effect to the country. Philippines,

as one of the humanitarian countries, was torn between two ideologies of practicality

and morality with regards to the 2019 NCOV outbreak. When the country still has zero

case of the virus before, Filipinos had been constantly suggesting to the president to

impose a travel ban from China to prevent the spread of the virus. Although it is

inhumane to let the Chinese People face the war against the deadly virus on their own,
our motherland was never prepared to handle an epidemic situation like the high –

mortality rate Corona Virus. According to Pepito (2020), the Philippines continues to

face public health challenges because of its resource and capacity limitations. With the

lack of capability for laboratory testing, limited number of equipment and medical

supplies, and lack of personal protective equipment for health workers in both primary

care units and hospitals; and lack of workers itself, it is highly visible that our own

country cannot cope with such deadly epidemia. However, Duterte, ignored the pleads

of the people and confidently told Filipinos "everything is well" in the Philippines and that

there's "nothing really to be extra scared of." He said public "hysteria" over the

coronavirus was "unwarranted" and that the virus would “die a natural death” as he

expressed confidence in medical advances. According to Tomacruz (2020), Duterte had

also hit xenophobic calls to bar all Chinese from entering the Philippines, saying it was

in “bad taste.” He later joked he would “slap” the virus while later saying the government

was “on top” of the coronavirus threat. Due to the rejection of the suggestions of

Filipinos to implement the travel ban, the virus eventually spread in the country until it

has surged to more than 500 thousand cases with more than 12 thousand deaths.

There are also massive communication gaps in policy. Social distancing and

lockdown policies are not well nuanced. Even some government officials and police

officials themselves failed to follow policies. According to Gavilan (2020), the NCRPO

chief Debold Sinas and other several police officials broke quarantine rule on physical

distancing and mass gathering in May 2020 during his 55 th birthday, amidst Enhance

Community Quarantine. However, instead of holding the violator accountable, they went

unpunished for violating protocols. The president himself, defended the violator calling
him a “good officer” and an “honest one”; and even promoted him to a higher position,

while several people were arrested instantly for not wearing masks. Due to this, it

caused a plethora of complaints from the public. This mere conflict shows the unjust,

prejudice system of the country and the lack of accountability of so called ‘leaders’.

Philippines has also achieved another milestone by being the world’s longest

lockdown while the country has still not significantly reduced the number of new cases

which also shows pure incompetence of the government. According to Yee (2020), in

the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 22-member Western Pacific region, it is only

the Philippines that continues to report cases in the thousands daily. Among the

Philippines’ partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesia is the

only other country seeing high numbers of infections. Unlike other countries, such as

Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, etc. the number of cases in their country are already

controlled and new cases are decreasing every day. Bloomfield (2020) also stated that

New Zealand are already announced as Covid free due to the immediate actions and

great leadership of their government. While in the Philippines, community quarantine is

still implemented and there’s still no concrete covid-19 plans presented to the public.

The country still lacks mass testing, the rate of unemployment is still increasing and the

economy is shrinking as Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 8.3 percent in the

September-to-December quarter from a year earlier, according to the statistics agency.

To sum up, the government’s response to the current health crisis is unsurprisingly

disappointing. For sure, every country obviously is affected with the virus, however, the

lack of actions, and continuous failed leadership of the Philippines government made it

more difficult to recover and restart. With the government’s slow response,
incompetence, lack of accountability, the country will certainly take much longer to

rehabilitate. As a citizen of this country, we should all be vigilant and educated enough

for all of us to be aware of what’s really happening in our surroundings. We should not

tolerate ignorance and arrogance because at the end of the day, we are all the only one

that are most affected in this situation.

References:

https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/list-controversies-debold-sinas-pnp-

chief

https://www.rappler.com/nation/duterte-message-filipinos-coronavirus-

february-13-2020

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1340659/longest-lockdown-lost-opportunities-

300k-cases

https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/feature-stories/detail/new-zealand-

takes-early-and-hard-action-to-tackle-covid-19

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/28/philippine-economy-shrank-at-

record-pace-in-2020-outlook-gloomy