The spread of the COVID-19 has greatly affected the Philippines, but this is not the first pandemic the country has faced. An epidemic of SARS in 2003 affected 26 countries including the Philippines. The country had 14 cases of SARS, the lowest number of  infected individuals out of all the 26 countries. Because of this fact, there may be some lessons we can learn from the country’s response to the 2003 SARS outbreak that we can apply to the COVID-19 outbreak we are currently facing now. 

In an interview with Rappler, Dr. Manuel Dayrit, the former Department of Health (DOH) Secretary during the SARS 2003 epidemic, and former Dean of the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health shared how the DOH contained the spread of SARS.

“First, you do surveillance, then you do case detection, and then you do clinical care of the patient,” said Dayrit.

Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recognized the problem and immediately formed the SARS Management Team (SMT) and made former DOH Secretary Dr. Manuel Dayrit as the “SARS czar” and assigned him and the DOH to spearhead the containment of SARS in the country. 

When the reports of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong came in, Former  President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo directed health and immigration authorities to quarantine anybody coming from Hong Kong and other  SARS-infected countries. 

“Fear and panic often traveled much faster than the virus itself then,” he said.

The local government units played a huge role in the containment of the virus, as they educated their constituents about the nature of the virus, and implemented such measures to limit the movement of the people and aid. 

The coordination between the national and local governments together with DOH to educate the people was a notable move as people did not know what to do in times of the outbreak. The local government units down to the public health officials in each barangay were properly briefed and educated, and supplied sufficient equipment to deal with the outbreak of SARS. 

Although different in nature and complexity of the situation, we hope that the past outbreak has taught us something that will be beneficial for the Philippines to be able to move past this crisis.

Source:
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/250107-things-to-learn-sars-epidemic-ex-doh-chief-manuel-dayrit
https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/02/06/opinion/columnists/lets-learn-from-the-nations-battle-against-sars/680196/.

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Author:
Jermaine Ocampo
News editor