Duterte warns local officials who won’t act vs COVID-19

December 27, 2020

Local government officials who would not follow the direction of the interagency task force in fighting the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) must be replaced, according to President Rodrigo Duterte.

With the new strains being reported in other countries that are feared to be more infectious, Duterte said the interdiction of local government is a big help for the national government.

“Actually, the government has the perfect setup. You have the president, then you have the governors, then you have the city mayors, municipal mayors, then the different barangays,” he said in a televised meeting on Saturday with some members of the Cabinet and health experts.

Duterte told Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año to make it an obligation for mayors and barangay captains to strictly follow their direction in the fight against COVID-19.

“There has to be a unanimity rather, in the modality because if not, they will work on their own or be lazy. So it behooves to the Secretary of Health to also move them to action,” he said.

“Let’s put it this way, if they are not at par --- in parity with the rest of the nation, replace them. In the meantime, we do not remove them from office, just replace, just move aside and maybe the vice mayor can do it… That’s my suggestion to Secretary Año. If they are not doing the very things that are important to the --- in this fight, because some, they take it as --- just an ordinary thing. They do not really, maybe they have not realized the seriousness, then we can always move --- move them,” he said.

The President made the statement after health experts said surveillance is one of the keys in assuring that they could immediately investigate the increase in the number of infections in the country.

Public health epidemiologist Dr. Troy Gepte acknowledged that there are a lot of successes in the government’s systems development for surveillance for diseases, contact tracing, and set up of laboratories and health facilities.

However, Gepte said some local government units (LGU) are performing better than others.

“Some are not that organized or there is lack of capacity and I think we should really be able to have that kind of granularity also to look at the systems performance down to the local level,” he said.

“I believe that DOH and DILG have that very close relationship so that we can inform them of what the probable gaps are in the surveillance system,” he added.

Gepte said since this is not the first and last time that a new variant would come, the government should study the surveillance system.

“So I think how we tried to get that system and study it and how we can further add to its strengthening and improvement, all the better for us to prepare ourselves for this threat of this new variant. It won't be the first and last time,” he said.

“And I think there will be other opportunities for us to learn on how to further strengthen our measures against this particular threat of possible mutations in the future,” he said.

Also during the meeting, Duterte approved the recommendation of Dr. Jaime Montoya, Executive Director of the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development, to strengthen the genomics surveillance, as part of the biosurveillance, to include target sequencing in high-risk groups, like clusters with increased cases and clusters with increased severity and deaths. Ella Dionisio/DMS