Herbosa to seek lifting of Philippine COVID-19 public health emergency

Health Secretary Ted Herbosa said Monday that he would recommend lifting the country's COVID-19 state of public health emergency.

In an ambush interview, Herbosa stressed that COVID-19 no longer posed an emergency and could be treated as any other disease that the Department of Health (DOH) monitors, like influenza, cough, and cold.

“Actually, wala nang emergency eh, 'di ba? (there is no longer an emergency). I think I would actually ask the lifting of the public health emergency in the country,” he said.

Then-President Rodrigo Duterte declared a state of public health emergency during the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.

Under Proclamation 922, the state of public health emergency would remain in force and effect until lifted or withdrawn by the President.

In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 no longer represented a global health emergency.

Herbosa, however, said that the alert level system would remain.

“The alert level system will stay because that’s a system like the typhoon signal that stays. But actually hindi na siya (that’s no longer a) public health emergency. Wala nang (there’s no) public health emergency,” he added.

In April, former DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the Philippines may only declare an end to its COVID-19 public health emergency if infections and hospital utilization remained manageable.

Vergeire had also said that the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) was pushing for the alert level system to be used as a risk communication tool and no longer an identifier of what restrictions should be imposed in a particular area amid the COVID-19 pandemic. — DVM, GMA Integrated News