By Art Jimenez Health Secretary Duque’s casual statement during the May 20 online Senate public hearing that we were, in fact, on the second wave of COVID-19 raised waves of disagreements from the Senate and Malacañan. Daggers of criticisms were shot at him laced with renewed demand for his resignation or dismissal. Almost immediately and
May 27, 2020
By Art Jimenez After a two-month virtual lockdown from mid-March to May 15, President Duterte allowed the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) to lapse in most parts of the country (including Western Visayas) that were reclassified as “low-risk areas.” However, Cebu and Mandaue Cities remain under ECQ. Moderate-risk provinces and cities were placed under general community
May 20, 2020
By Art Jimenez There are a number of ways foreign currency comes into our economic system. Two of them, tourism and OFW remittances and how Covid-19 has impacted them, were earlier taken up in this series. Another major mechanism that directly involves foreign currency is foreign trade. How has community quarantine here and abroad affected
May 13, 2020
By Art Jimenez Impact on Remittances In January this year, our OFWs remitted $2.7 billion to their waiting families and relatives. Almost the entire amount, or $2.1 billion, was remitted by land-based OFWs and the balance, $0.6 billion by the sea-based workers. The $2.7 billion total is higher than the four-year average from 2016 to
May 6, 2020
By Art Jimenez Still two weeks from the April 30 lapse of the extended ECQ in Luzon and by adoption, here and much of the country, some cabinet officials, legislators, LGUs and the people have been agitating for its non-extension by end-April. Workers need to return to their jobs, business need sales, transport firms need
April 22, 2020
By Art Jimenez Choose: Health or Wealth? Upon advice, President Rodrigo Duterte chose for us Health. And that’s when our economic wealth started to falter. But first things first. “Health” was behind the flurry of recent presidential proclamations: (1) declaring the entire nation in a “state of public health emergency due to Covid-19,” (2) placing
April 15, 2020
By Art Jimenez How time flies for a killer virus. Just two months and a week ago on February 1, the DOH confirmed our country’s first Covid-19 casualty. Not a Filipino, he was a 44-year old from Wuhan, China. He went into the record books as the first Chinese casualty outside his country. Sensing a
April 8, 2020
By Art Jimenez Here is a classic foundation for an MBA case study: how could a seemingly simple pneumonia virus bring the world’s health and economy down to their knees in just the first quarter of this year? What illness is that has infected close to 700,000 persons and killed over 30,000 individuals in 200
April 1, 2020
Estimates from leading epidemiological and institutional experts on communicable diseases estimate that in the US alone, Covid-19 could infect around 40 million people. In the Philippines, estimates run as high as 26,000 infections. Covid-19 has yet no known cure and therefore no vaccines and no specific treatments are known for people infected
March 24, 2020