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Hontiveros on house-to-house search for coronavirus patients: Like Oplan Tokhang but for COVID

July 15, 2020 | 12:29pm

Hontiveros on house-to-house search for coronavirus patients: Like Oplan Tokhang but for COVID

File photo from 2018 shows Senator Risa Hontiveros.

The STAR / Geremy Pintolo

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Risa Hontiveros on Wednesday slammed law enforcement's plans to conduct house-to-house operations in search of coronavirus patients under home quarantine and to transfer those found to isolation facilities.

"Parang tokhang pero pang-COVID." (Like [Oplan Tokhang] but for COVID).

Oplan Tokhang is the police practice of going house-to-house most often associated with the government's bloody war on drugs, which has reaped over 5,000 deaths by Philippine National Police figures but as high as 27,000 fatalities by the count of several rights groups.

Interior Secretary Eduardo Año on Tuesday said that the new house-to-house search for novel covronavirus patients would be an initiative between local government units and the national police.

He also encouraged citizens to report their neighbors who were "COVID-19 positive and hiding" to the police.

READ: Public told to report neighbors with COVID-19 as cops prepare to go house-to-house | Police set to use 'anti-tambay' template for quarantine enforcement

Hontiveros expressed concern that the operations "may actually discourage more people from reporting their status," saying "we need to improve home [and] community-based healthcare," instead.

READ: Gov't said Filipinos are 'pasaway' and violate quarantine, but data show otherwise | Task force: SAF a solution to Cebu City residents' 'failure' to follow health protocols

She also reiterated her calls for the government to shift its focus from a police-centered approach against the pandemic to a medical one.

"Instead of police, we need doctors and health workers in barangays and in homes."

READ: Hontiveros to gov't: Rethink militaristic, police-centered strategy vs COVID-19 | 'War' narrative in COVID-19 crisis fails to empower Filipinos, groups say

'Overzealous' arrests and 'disproportionate' punishments

The Commission on Human Rights has previously expressed concern that arrests made by police amid the novel coronavirus pandemic "appear to violate the government's own health and safety guidelines."

The commission observed that physical distancing guidelines, in particular, seem to be disregarded during arrests.

This new initiative is likely to further exacerbate close contact between police and citizens which flies in the face of the minimum health standards being implemented across the country.

Even before these operations were announced, several lawmakers and rights groups were already flagging what they called overzealous arrests and disproportionate punishments being doled out by the national police in the name of enforcing community quarantine rules.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Wednesday softened the terms of Año's earlier announcement, telling ANC's "Headstart" that reports of quarantined coronavirus-positive individuals must first come from the individuals themselves, their family members, or their barangay to merit a house visit.

Once reported by any of the parties mentioned, those suspected can be taken by force.

The Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act requires "reporting of a condition to local or state health authorities, as required for notifiable diseases, epidemics or public health events of public health concern".

The law has also been used as justification to arrest people for holding protests or for going on outreach programs during the quarantine and was cited by Año on Tuesday.

"We need more and better barangay-based healthcare, not this," Hontiveros said. —with reports from Franco Luna