The Philippines had 4,500 coronavirus testing kits when President Rodrigo Duterte declared a public health emergency on Monday, March 9, 2020. It expected 2,000 more from the World Health Organisation.
“The outbreak… constitutes an emergency that threatens national security, which requires a whole-of-government approach,” Duterte said in a proclamation. The worry was that the virus was already spreading undetected in Manila and nearby suburbs.
What the emergency does
The declaration releases funds to help local governments prepare for a large outbreak. It also relaxes the rules for buying testing kits, masks, protective gear and other supplies that health workers need.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque called it “a pre-emptive call to ensure that national and local governments and public and private healthcare providers are prepared for a possible increase in suspected and confirmed cases.” He warned that “moving from localised transmission to sustained community transmission can happen very quickly.”
Cases so far
On Saturday, the Health Ministry raised its alert to “code red sub level 1,” the second-highest, after confirming local transmission. The country then had 10 confirmed cases. They included a Chinese national from Wuhan who traveled to the Philippines and later died, the first death from the outbreak reported outside China. Two Chinese patients had recovered.
The first case of community transmission was a 62-year-old Filipino. His 59-year-old wife also tested positive. Neither had been abroad recently. The mayor with jurisdiction ordered the Muslim prayer hall he attended closed, and a nearby town handed out face masks, disinfectants and vitamins in the neighborhoods around his home.
Testing and a possible lockdown
Duque said politicians’ sense that the ministry was not doing enough “is largely because of our limited testing supplies.” More kits, he said, would let the government widen who gets tested. It was also weighing offers from China and South Korea.
If several community outbreaks emerged, the alert would go to “code red sub level 2,” the highest. That would let the government quarantine or lock down entire communities and suspend school and work, at municipal, city or provincial level, with police and soldiers helping. A lockdown was “premature,” Duque said. “We have to wait for evidence of sustained community transmission.”
Local governments were not waiting. Three cities and two towns suspended classes that week so classrooms could be disinfected, and shopping malls began disinfecting their premises. Hospitals and affected companies issued their own statements to counter rumors spreading online.
