Gov’t urged to step up info drive on dangers of COVID-19
A PARTY-LIST congressman has urged the government’s public information arm to do more to create awareness on the dangers posed by the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) virus which has now mutated into more contagious and deadlier variants.
Ang Probinsyano party-list Rep. Ronnie Ong said the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) should maximize the potential of its various information dissemination assets like the Philippine Information Agency (PIA), the Philippine News Agency (PNA) and the Philippine Broadcasting Network (PBN) to increase people’s awareness on the deadly consequences of ignoring the virus.
Ong said the government must step up in putting out information collaterals, boost social media optics, leaflets, flyers and television and radio infomercials that will not just provide the public faceless and nameless statistics but a graphic warning of the horrific ordeal one has to go through because of COVID-19.
Ong said that a lot of Filipinos are still not taking the COVID-19 pandemic very seriously because most of them are still clueless of the pain and the anguish that patients experience aside from the massive treatment cost.
“It’s really hard to understand how people could still act like there’s no virus when we have already reached the one million mark in terms of death. The government has already spent billions taken from loans just to be able to provide aid for our people and finance our anti-covid response. It has been more than a year and many Filipinos are still in denial that Covid is real,” Ong said.
He cited the news reports about the hundreds of people crowding a pool resort in Caloocan City as an unfortunate reminder that many Filipinos are still completely oblivious of the fact that Covid is a deadly and a highly contagious disease which could wipe out entire families.
One possible way to dissuade people from violating the basic health and safety protocols laid out by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) is to come up with graphic and easily relatable visual materials that makes people realize that Covid is not just a killer but is also a very painful disease.
“Some people I know who lived to tell their ordeal told me the indescribable pain that they had to suffer. They can feel their lungs collapsing as they try to struggle to breathe. Parang meron daw truck na nakadagan sa dibdib mo sa sobrang sakit. We have to share these stories in a manner that people will have a self-realization that taking the risk for non-essential activities like going to pool parties or biking on big pelotons could put you or your loved ones in extreme pain and even death,” Ong said.
“The government needs to let our people visualize and experience the pain of being sick with COVID by way of various information materials. This should be the focus of our government’s information agencies,” Ong said.
