NIMBY

There is no purely airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus, we are told meaning we can’t get it simply by close proximity to an infected person, unless he or she coughs or sneezes and the droplets enter our system.

Such droplets don’t remain suspended in the air for long or float around to be blown by the wind from hospital isolation wards to homes.

The assurance from health authorities, however, has not stopped people from protesting against the use of facilities in their communities for the quarantine of persons under investigation (PUI) for possible nCoV infection.

In the case of Metro Manila, I guess we simply never got the chance to think of protesting. We have always lived with the infectious disease testing and quarantine centers right in our midst: San Lazaro Hospital in Manila and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa.

The country’s main ports of entry by air and sea are also in Metro Manila. So the NIMBY or not in my backyard attitude when it comes to infectious diseases is rather weak in the National Capital Region.

If there is ever a need, however, for drastic measures to contain the spread of nCoV, as it is now doing on the Chinese mainland, the first region that will have to be placed on lockdown will be Metro Manila.

Fortunately for us, there is no need for this… yet. And even if the need ever crops up, it’s doubtful that such a lockdown can be enforced.

In the meantime, we need to enhance our preparedness for new killer viruses.

SARS, seasonal influenza or A(H1N1) and MERS-CoV gave us airport thermal scanners and footbaths as well as N95 face masks.

Will massive lockdowns become institutionalized due to the 2019-nCoV acute respiratory syndrome?

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The most striking aspect of nCoV ARD is the scale of the lockdowns. It’s the first time that I’ve seen entire cities turned into virtual ghost towns practically overnight.

An international airline pilot, whose flight was one of the last to leave Beijing before the Philippines banned travel to the Chinese mainland plus Hong Kong and Macau, says the streets were almost totally deserted. There was nothing to do in the once bustling Chinese capital, he said, so he just bought food in a convenience store beside the hotel and returned to his room.

Anyone who has visited congested Beijing will understand the enormity of making about 22 million people stay indoors. Make that about P1.4 billion, as the nCoV has now spread to all the regions of that country.

But that’s China, which can build within just two weeks vast hospital buildings to quarantine and monitor nCoV ARD patients and PUIs. The country has its own capability to establish if a person is infected and to identify the specific pathogen.

And as we have seen, the country has the capability not just to make everyone stay indoors, but also to ensure that people remain at home for an indefinite period.

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In our case, we are just starting to see the need to ramp up our quarantine facilities. This is easier said than done, considering that we can’t build even decent evacuation centers in our disaster-prone country.

Possibly inspired by the sight of the instant quarantine hospitals in China, our officials have picked the Athletes’ Village in New Clark City as quarantine area. This was after the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency balked at using the drug rehab center at Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija for nCoV quarantine purposes.

The nCoV contagion continues to evolve, spawning novel problems especially in the age of fake news. Should students, faculty and other school personnel, for example, wear face masks?

Several Chinese schools in Metro Manila had quickly suspended classes, as some of their students had just returned from celebrating (or trying to celebrate) the Lunar New Year in China. Such decisions are up to the private school administrators.

As for public schools, the administrators need clearance from the Department of Education main office. DepEd, meanwhile, gets guidance on such matters from the Department of Health. The DOH, for its part, gets guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its office in the country.

Protocols have yet to be drawn up for evolving situations. Department of Education Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan says it has been “a teaching moment” for DepEd.

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Apart from the inadequacy of quarantine facilities, our government officials get distracted by other considerations even when faced with a public health emergency.

After allowing travelers from Wuhan to enter and move around the Philippines, authorities are now scrambling to trace the people who came in contact with the three confirmed nCoV cases.

On our Cignal TV / One News show “The Chiefs,” we had asked Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, shortly after the nCoV contagion was first reported in the Philippines, if he would recommend a ban on travelers coming from mainland China. He said he would rather wait for cues from the WHO.

In the absence of a ban, of course airlines continued their flights between the Philippines and the Chinese mainland as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Ship cruise passengers from those destinations were allowed to disembark in Manila’s port.

So now the inter-agency task force is busy tracing and monitoring – if the persons are still in the Philippines – the passengers seated near the two confirmed nCoV cases (with one fatality) on their flight from Wuhan via Hong Kong to Cebu, Dumaguete and then Manila.

The third confirmed case also flew in via Hong Kong to Cebu and then Bohol, and was back in China before one of two tests conducted on her in Manila turned up positive for nCoV.

Figures on the number of people infected keep jumping exponentially by the day, and the death toll has surpassed in less than two months the one-year toll for SARS.

At the rate the virus is spreading, there might soon be no place left where residents can say NIMBY.