The Department of Finance (DOF) has secured a US$3-million grant from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help strengthen the Philippines’ capability in containing the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that the World Health Organization (WHO) had classified as a pandemic, Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said.
Dominguez said the financial aid will come from the Asia-Pacific Disaster Response Fund (APDRF) administered by the ADB, which will fully implement and manage the grant, including the procurement of medical supplies, as well as the selection of, signing of contract with, and payment of, the supplier.
All actions taken on this grant facility was in close coordination with the Department of Health (DOH), the main implementing agency.
Dominguez said that as agreed with DOH, the ADB grant will help support the National Contingency Plan for COVID-19.
In its letter dated March 13 to ADB Director General Ramesh Subramaniam, the DOF said the Philippine government was requesting from the Bank “a grant of emergency assistance amounting to $3 million to finance COVID-19 public health measures, such as equipment and reagents for diagnostic, personal protection equipment; equipment for management of severe cases; equipment for makeshift hospitals; and risk communication to the population.”
“Given the emergency of this extraordinary situation, the government confirms to delegate full administration of the grant to ADB,” the DOF said in its letter.
The grant aims to strengthen the capacity of DOH and other concerned agencies in diagnosing and confirming COVID-19 infections.
Dominguez said the grant will also help enhance safety measures in place for health workers involved in the fight against COVID-19 through the provision of personal protective equipment; increase the treatment capacity for mild cases of the disease, including the building of makeshift hospitals; and improve hospital equipment for the treatment of most severe cases.
“The ADB will also support the government to ensure rapid response to the current outbreak. The government has asked ADB to conduct on its behalf the procurement of the emergency supplies. ADB will work closely with the DOH and the United Nations in coordinating the response,” Dominguez said.
The APDRF provides quick-disbursing grants to assist ADB developing member-countries in meeting immediate expenses to restore life-saving services to affected populations following a declared disaster, and in augmenting aid provided by other donors in times of natural crisis.
President Duterte declared on March 8 a state of public health emergency through Proclamation No. 922 to ensure that the government can best fight and contain the spread of COVID-19.
On March 12, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ITFMEID) declared that the code alert system for COVID-19 has reached Code Red Sublevel 2, the highest alert level.
President Duterte then ordered decisive measures in place to support Code Red Sublevel 2, including the community quarantine of Metro Manila for a month; a ban on mass gatherings; the extension of the week-long suspension of classes in all levels by a month; a month-long suspension of government work but with the assignment of skeletal work staff to all agencies and the work-at-home setup for other state workers; and an entry travel ban on foreigners from countries with confirmed COVID-19 cases, except for the families of Filipinos, those with permanent resident visas and diplomats.
In a March 11 statement, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom said that with the number of cases in two weeks’ time increasing 13-fold to 118,000 infections outside China—the epicenter of COVID-19—and the number of affected countries tripling to 114, this new strain of the coronavirus “can be characterized as a pandemic.”
However, the WHO chief added it is “a pandemic that can be controlled, at the same time” with “urgent and aggressive” actions by all countries.
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