A Year in Review of the COVID-19 in the Philippines

It has been a year and the word COVID-19 continue to be prominent, with every news we see the word
pandemic or similar keywords are always dominating the headlines. The impact of COVID-19 in the
Philippines is not improving but rather it is taking a turn for the worse which will consequently place the
future at risk. The continual economic downfall, mutations of the virus, unemployment, and the
unqualified distance learning system, which all roots from the inefficient response of our government will
make us question if there is even a possible end to this chaos.

Short recap on the origin of the virus, COVID-19 stands for coronavirus disease which was originally
known as ‘2019-nCoV’ or 2019 novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China. Since then, the WHO
declared the COVID 19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. On March 15, 2020, Enhanced Community
Quarantine (ECQ) was implemented and there were only 140 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 12
deaths and 2 recoveries. Fast forward to a year later March 15, 2021, the number of cases reached
626,893 with 12,837 deaths and 560,577 recoveries, and on the same date the new cases skyrocketed to
5,404 which is the 4th highest single day increase of cases, and the highest number in 7 months since
August 14, 2020. Data from the daily COVID-19 case bulletins of the Department of Health (DOH).

Aside from the rise of cases, the recent events of the Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Debold Sinas
and presidential spokesperson Harry Roque testing positive for the virus themselves whom which both
have history of violating quarantine protocols, and with the House of Representatives also currently have
29 active cases as of Tuesday, March 16 yet they continued the plenary hall session at the Batasang
Pambansa in Quezon City just reflects how negligent our leaders are. In Contrast, Healthcare
professionals ironically stated that the government should stop blaming the people, since they’re forced in
situations that won’t make them follow the protocols due to the ineffective control of the government,
stated in the recent conference on Tuesday, March 16 of the Healthcare Professionals Alliance Against
COVID-19 (HPAAC) – the leading association of health groups in the country.

Given the situation, our economy is not much of a news either, according to the Philippine Statistics
Authority (PSA) the annual unemployment rate in 2020 rose to 10.3% which is equal to about 4.5 million
Filipinos that are unemployed, this rate is the highest since the unemployment rate of 2005. With,
millions of Filipinos won’t receive adequate needs leading to starvation and poverty. Our debt also rose
by 26.7% to 9.7 trillion in the past year since our government kept needing funds to counter the crisis, it
increased to 10.3 trillion by the end of January 2021 as stated by the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr).

As other countries are slowly returning to normal, we are back to square one as our government seem to
have not learned anything from the pandemic, with the continual dispute of the virus and the
incompetence of our government has made us question if we will even still see the light of the day as our
leaders continues to paint a gloomy future, with a year that had just passed by our situation only have
gotten worse hence the possibility of a post-pandemic is vaguer than ever as it places a deep wound in our
economy and the future.