Nobody saw it coming.
Not even the experts at disaster preparedness. It took the World Health Organization to even decide calling the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in China, a pandemic.
Like a thief in the night, COVID-19 stealthily took over our lives and changed the way we lived in the last three years. Even as the WHO declared that COVID-19 is not a public health emergency any longer, those three years were undoubtedly painful ones.
People needed to change behavior. With high mortality at the beginning of the pandemic in the 21st century, science needed to step up quickly in order to find treatment and vaccines against the virus.
Unfortunately, as science raced to address the gaps of healthcare, the virus mutated to more evasive variants and sub variants. They too, needed to survive.
The casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic was not only health-related. Deaths, post-COVID sequelae, and other unaddressed health issues which were not attended to during the pandemic because of fear of going to hospitals and contracting the virus was something we needed to address. Immunization against common preventable diseases were placed on hold. Necessary work-ups for other ailments were on pause mode, worsening the saddled healthcare systems globally.
But health wasn't the only major casualty of the pandemic.
The economy of various countries, particularly those that remained in lockdown for the longest period of time suffered the most. People lost their jobs because businesses had to close. Those that survived would need time to recover the 2019 numbers. And it's not going to happen overnight. It will take more resources and deeper pockets to continue operating the same way we did 4 years ago.
There are lessons learned from this pandemic.
Lockdowns don't work, particularly for poor countries like the Philippines, where majority of its people live below the poverty line. The fear of contracting the virus and getting sick was coupled with some very poor decision making from the previous administration. A bitter pill of truth that is difficult to swallow.
Disaster preparedness will require a political will. This will not be the last pandemic to strike us. If there are those in government who will misuse and abuse the coffers of the health department, we will end up waiting like beggars for dole-outs from donor countries for vaccines and medicines. By then, it would be too late.
If you look at the situation we are in today, we are still at the sad place in health.
We have little regard for the healthcare sector, and its healthcare workers. There is no budget for vaccines for its people and we remain mendicants in many aspects of health.
Quo vadis Pilipinas?
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