Polegov

 While the national government is struggling to procure COVID-19 vaccines, at least 25 local government units have inked deals with the United Kingdom's Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine. 14 of the LGUs are from the National Capital Region, three are from the Ilocos Region, one each from the Cordillera Administrative Region and CALABARZON; and three each from Visayas and Mindanao. The Astrazeneca vaccine is the second COVID-19 vaccine that the Philippine government has given emergency use authorization. The first is the  Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Is your LGU included in the list? Check the table below.

 Traveling? Not all destinations are equal, to paraphrase a saying. That includes  the COVID-19-related requirements of your destinations. Before you pack your things, check out what you need to bring.

Adversity reveals genius. So an adage says. True enough, the Coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic has brought the Philippines one of the most popular and even well-oved mayor -- Vico Sotto. Mayor Vico was recognized when he implemented out of the box initiatives to address the issues brought about by COVID-19. Often, he earns the ire of the officials in the national government not because he was wrong but because he is the first, if not among the first, to show that a simple solution actually works.  In this video, Mayor Vico and Pasig City shares one of the best decisions they made -- transforming the Pasig City Children's Hospital into a COVID-19 facility and beef up the local health system to increase efficiency, reduce risk of contamination between COVID and non-COVID cases, and control, if not reduce the number of positive cases. Because of its experience, the city government is now panning to operate the hospital as a specialty hospital for infectious diseases -- a facilit

Republic Act 7160 otherwise known as the Local Government Code of the Philippines was once considered as the most advanced in Southeast Asia. But when theory meets reality especially in responding to pandemics like COVID-19, that is where everything becomes interesting.  In 2014, Doc. Eddie Dorotan and I co-wrote the book, "Issues and Critical Actions in Local Governance". The book was made possible with the support of the Galing Pook Foundation, Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. In sum, the book presents the  opportunities and major changes the Code introduced in the sub-national governance as well as itemize the issues and challenges being encountered by the local government officials in the pursuit of their functions. The Code is supposed to be automatically reviewed and amended. However, because of interest incompatibilities among legislators and other stakeholders, nothing happened. True, reviews were conducted particu

No one has ever found a cure yet to t he Coronavirus disease (COVID)19. The only possible ways to mitigate its effect are to avoid it using the approved health protocols, control its spread by identifying those who are infected, and tracing those who have contacts with the infected to isolate as well as treat them. The City of Ilagan in Isabela implemented programs that integrates these. Not only that, they also tried to automate contact tracing by developing an app that can be used even by less techy individuals. The app. called HealthGuard, was developed in partnership with Isabela State University. It is basically a contact tracing app that could give data and information to aid evidence-based decision-making. Do you also have a similar contact tracing system in your LGU? Feel free to leave a comment below.