A COUSIN of my wife died of Covid-19 while in a hospital in Talisay City recently and his relatives immediately encountered another problem post-hospitalization, this time related to burial. The hospital asked them to take the body from the morgue because it does not have a refrigeration facility. My wife sought the help of some Talisay City Government officials who thankfully responded positively to her plea. But when her relatives called a funeral home for services, like cremation, they were told to wait until Aug. 16. That posed problems on where to keep the body. Immediate burial was an option, but the Pardo cemetery is full. We don’t know how his relatives solved the problem as of this writing.
But the relatives of my cousin’s wife are not alone. The Cebu City Government is already recommending cemeteries in the mountain areas as burial grounds for those who died of Covid-19. The same move was done in earlier infection surges, which means the situation is as dire or even worse than before. Acting Mayor Michael Rama is even transforming the use of the Cebu City Sports Center from a sports facility to a mega isolation facility for asymptomatic Covid-19 patients.
But this is a good development because this means that government officials are finally recognizing the problem. In Cebu Province, which is now the top province in the country in terms of infections, Gov. Gwen Garcia has loosened a bit on her previous “no lockdown” stance and has agreed, together with the mayors, to impose “purok” lockdowns if the infections in a particular “purok” reaches at least 10 percent of the population.
Which reminds me of an observation by experts on the surges in infections in southeast Asia. They called on officials of affected countries to look for action other than what it termed as “Zero Covid” strategy that involves hard lockdowns that they said cannot be sustained. It’s the same balancing dilemma between health and economic goals. They are virtually endorsing the approach used by former US president Donald Trump. Which is going on with life and accepting that deaths are bound to occur with the pandemic.
That is another line of thinking altogether, one that is opposed to the current line of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases that uses a graduated form of lockdowns. The Donald Trump approach resulted in the US topping the worldwide count on the number of Covid-19 deaths in a country. Are we prepared for our version of a surge in the number of Covid-19 deaths in the country or in Cebu also?
This is why the balancing act is difficult for government officials. It’s either they close their eyes to the rising number of Covid-19 deaths and focus on the economy or resort to what worked before, which is to focus on health concerns and attend to the economy only after the surge has been licked. Either way, we would all suffer from it. Or not until we complete the best option of all: mass vaccination.