Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]
In December 2019, cases of COVID-19 began ap- 109 pearing in Wuhan City in Hubei, China, but it was only on January 1 that the Chinese government would officially confirm the outbreak. A few days later, a lockdown was imposed in Wuhan and its environs. But by then, millions of Chinese travellers were already headed to various holiday destination in China and abroad, including the Philippines. The first coronavirus cases to be reported in the Philippines at the end of January were of Chinese tourists from Wuhan, with a few of them later dying from the disease. The Philippines became the first country outside China to record a confirmed death from the disease. The situation should not have worsened had airline flights to the Philippines from Wuhan been immediately stopped by China as part of its lockdown. News reports that month already mentioned a mysterious epidemic spreading from Hubei, with Vietnam and Laos immediately closing their border with China, and even HongKong citizens demanding a stop to Chinese arrrivals. However, China allowed flights to the Philippines from Wuhan and other affected cities to continue for the whole month of February, bringing human “time bombs” spreading the disease. President Duterte, with his pro-China orientation, belittled the threat of the then mysterious epidemic, and did not listen to the rising demand for an end to flights from China. What appeared to be more important then was the income of the airline and tourism businesses. Only with the World Health Organization’s declaration of a COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, did the Duterte administration act to totally stop the entry of travellers from China and other gravely-affected countries, and to initiate measures to control the spread of the pandemic in the Philippines. As expected, a militarized response was imposed, with a nationwide lockdown and the appointment of around 40 retired military and police generals to several inter-agency “task forces” for particular areas of civilian control, transportation control, community surveys, information dissemination, etc. The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) which is attached to the Department of Health, and is headed by retired Gen. Ricardo Morales who is a close friend of Duterte, took center stage in the task of assisting COVID-19 victims. As in other neocolonial capitalist countries, health services are primarily dependent upon the profit motivation of private hospitals, the private pharmaceutical industry, the private health insurance companies, and the private manufacturers of medical machineries and equipment. Those who cannot pay the pri-
