Philippine Development Response to Mitigate the COVID-19 Pandemic: A case study in Central Visayas

Abstract

Policies play a crucial role in ensuring the welfare of a country's economy, its public health, and its social welfare safety nets in times of crisis. This article would like to identify the different policies employed by some of the ASEAN member countries, albeit heavily putting emphasis on Philippine's response to the pandemic. Countries have employed more or less identical policies as per standard protocol by the World Health Organization. However, policies that allowed for the capacitating of a country's facilities; such as but not limited to acquisition of equipments and more testing kits, and that of personnel are more effective in drastically slowing down the spread of the pandemic. The study has also found that there have been challenges, flaws, and certain difficulties to the implementation of policies. Most of the policies identified that target beneficiaries of identified vulnerable sectors are not sustainable. Some of the policies only aim to be band-aid (temporary) solutions , most of which only allowing at most two months of either financial assistance or in kind from the government, which is truly not enough to have outlasted a lockdown that lasted for almost 16 months. Finally, a draconic response or strong man policy has been found to have varying effects. It has also been found that such a response if misguided can lose its purpose and can be used as a means to crack down critics of a regime and those who are critical of its efficacy in its response to the pandemic.