Doctors: Fix response, avoid LOCKDOWN CYCLE. Inquirer Newsletter. March 29, 2021.

No images? Click here   DEJA VU Members of the Blas family, each holding a coconut frond, listen to online Mass on Palm Sunday inside their home in Barangay 826 in Paco, Manila. For the second year in a row, Catholic churches are shuttered during Holy Week as the metropolis goes under a week-long enhanced community quarantine starting today. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ     Regions Boracay shuts bars; arrivals plummet ILOILO CITY—Authorities on Boracay Island have suspended operations of all bars and food parks amid rising cases of COVID-19 that led to the lockdown of two subvillages starting on Sunday. —REPORTS FROM NESTOR P. BURGOS JR. AND CARMELA REYES-ESTROPE INQ Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Board Talk Microsoft wants PH to embrace technology tighter, faster When the corornavirus pandemic struck early last year, life as most people knew it changed and many daily work activities ground to a halt. All industries felt the adverse impacts of the public health crisis, but one sector where a solution was urgently needed was the country's justice system — a system already notorious for its slow speed, now made even slower by the COVID-19 outbreak. —STORY BY Daxim L. Lucas Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Newsletter / Join us Has this been forwarded by a friend? Subscribe now to the Philippine Daily Inquirer Newsletter and get your latest news and important updates on COVID-19. Subscribe     Learn more   Banner Story Doctors: Fix response, avoid LOCKDOWN CYCLE By Dona Z. Pazzibugan After seven months, hospitals are again overrun with COVID-19 patients and the situation will likely be seen again without “systemic changes” in the government’s pandemic response, according to a group of doctors. The Healthcare Professionals Alliance Against COVID-19 (HPAAC) put forward six “sustainable solutions” to the health crisis shortly after Malacañang announced on Saturday that Metro Manila and four surrounding provinces would revert to enhanced community quarantine this week. “The lockdown is an important but a mere temporary measure to stop the movement of the people and stop the transmission of the virus so that our hospitals will not be overrun,” said Dr. Pauline Convocar, president of the Philippine College of Emergency Medicine and an active member of HPAAC, during an online press conference on Saturday night. Convocar said hospitals in Metro Manila reached “critical condition” on Friday and had to turn away patients. “Our hearts break whenever there are patients who die in the ER (emergency room) because there are no available beds in the wards or the ICU (intensive care unit),” said Convocar, who was on duty on Saturday when she read HPAAC’s position paper. During the first “timeout” called by health workers last August, when hospitals in Metro Manila hit capacity due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, HPAAC also asked for “comprehensive reforms” to the pandemic response. “Although some reforms have been made, there are still a lot of changes needed so that cases will not surge the moment we reopen the economy. If we do not do these, we will keep going back to this situation,” Convocar said.—WITH REPORTS FROM INQ Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Editorial More aid needed According to the Asian Development Bank Institute, across the region, it was in the Philippines where the biggest share of households, or 85 percent of respondents, said they experienced financial hardships due to the pandemic; 84 percent said their incomes dropped last year, 'with less than 30 percent having enough resources to cover necessary expenditures for more than a month.' Read full story: opinion.inquirer.net     Copyright © 2020 PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: P.O. Box 2353, Makati Central Post Office, 1263 Makati City, Philippines.   Share    Tweet    Share    Forward  Preferences  |  Unsubscribe