Author: Padayon UP

Twenty-three UP Visayas (UPV) students from Negros Occidental who were stranded in Miagao and Iloilo City due to the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) have gone home.

The UPV Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration facilitated the May 5 travel of the students in coordination with the Office of Civil Defense Office of the Governor, Negros Occidental; and the Office of the Mayor, Bacolod City.

The undertaking followed two memoranda from UPV Chancellor Ricardo Babaran. Memorandum No. RPB 2020-04-052 issued on April 26 advised students to start making preparations for going back to their hometowns. Memorandum No. RPB 2020-05-055 issued on May 3 provided more details on what the students needed to do.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, is well-known for causing respiratory problems. However, the virus does not only attack the lungs but targets other organs as well.

As UP College of Medicine professor and Philippine Nephrology Society vice president Dr. Elizabeth Montemayor said: “Patients with kidney problems are a very special group of patients who will need very special attention.”

The local chapter of UP Beta Sigma Fraternity in the University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) distributed 100 liters of alcohol and 1000 pieces of medical grade surgical masks to different health centers and hospitals in the first district of Iloilo, including the municipalities of Oton, Tigbauan, Guimbal, Miag-ao, and the UPV Infirmary and dormitories.

“COVID-19 Brief : A Timeline in Maps” lays down the story with a map of highly urbanized Cebu City as well as its 80 barangays, divided into urban (lowlands) and rural (highlands), and delineated by population density. The map also shows the places in the highly dense residential areas of Cebu City where “social distancing”, which means staying ideally two meters away from other people, is virtually impossible.

The timeline of Cebu City’s battle against COVID-19 begins on April 1, after the Cebu City Health Department reported the first 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Cebu City on March 29 and released a breakdown by barangay on April 1. The map goes on to plot the progression of the number of cases per barangay one week later, and on April 15.

Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic has made UPLB colleges and institutes step up to do their part.

One of these is the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS-IMSP), some of whose faculty members are part of  the Committee for Technology and Facility Innovation of the UPLB Task Force Laban ng Bayan Kontra Covid-19.  

The tricycle drivers and laundrywomen have long been a part of the UP Visayas community in Miagao since the campus opened in 1989.The drivers ferry faculty, staff and students around the sprawling campus and the town proper. The laundrywomen service the students staying at the dorms as well as residents living in the staff houses.

In these extraordinary times, speed is of the essence. To further accelerate our LGUs’ CoVID-19 response, CoVcheck developed the Quarantine Buddy (QB).

“Communication is important and necessary. People tend to underestimate the importance of communication because it comes easily to most of us. But difficulties communicating brings about frustration and can even strain relationships,” said Michael Valdez, Speech Pathology Chair at the College of Allied Medical Professions (CAMP) at University of the Philippines (UP) Manila. “The need for communicating is also highlighted as everyone is experiencing constant change during this time. It is crucial to establish an understanding of the situation and the changes it brings about to our daily lives. People with communication difficulties tend to feel more left out and confused in times like this.”

Question: How does one explain the COVID-19 crisis from a governance perspective in an easily digestible and palatable manner?

Answer: Use a popular web series for parallelism.

This was what Dr. Kristoffer Berse did in his talk, “Crash Landing on ECQ: Crisis Leadership and Accountability in COVID-19 Philippines.” It was organized by the Master of Management Program of the UP Open University (UPOU) Faculty of Management and Development Studies in partnership with the Association of Schools of Public Administration in the Philippines, Inc. as part of UPOU’s “Let’s Talk It Over” online lecture series.

Berse is a faculty member of the UP Diliman National College of Public Administration and Governance. He is also the director for Research and Creative Work at the UP Resilience Institute and part of the UP COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team.

UP honors the memory of those who have succumbed to COVID-19 as “unknown heroes who fell during the night” in a music video of Fr. Manuel Francisco’s “Hindi Kita Malilimutan”, featuring the symbolic image of UP’s Oblation and an alumni roster whose lives were also taken by the virus.

UP’s internet television, TVUP, produced the video “In Memoriam: UP Video Tribute” with the song performed by the UP Villancico Vocal Ensemble as arranged by Eudenice Palaruan.