Image: Facebook/Jennylyn Mercado
Actress Jennylyn Mercado lamented how health workers still need to ask for mandatory COVID-19 testing and better work schedules as they contine to work at the forefront in the fight against COVID-19.
“Nakakadismaya na kailangan pa talaga nila magdemand sa mga bagay na dapat kusang ibinibigay sa kanila,” Mercado tweeted in response to a report on nurses from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) demanding more protection from the disease.
(It is dismaying how they still have to demand things that should have been given to them voluntarily.)
Filipino Nurses United noted in a statement yesterday, July 24, that of the 303 PGH health workers who have contracted the novel coronavirus, 121 are nurses, two of whom have succumbed already to COVID-19.
One Twitter user @ribsep, meanwhile, replied to Mercado’s tweet, “[They’re] literally dying doing their job while earning little tapos kailangan pa magmakaawa para lang ma-test (yet they still need to beg to get tested).”
The actress then echoed the same sentiments, replying, “Yun yung pinakamasaklap dun. Kawawa ang ating medical frontliners (That is the worst thing about this. I pity our medical frontliners). They deserve better than this.”
Yun yung pinakamasaklap dun.
Kawawa ang ating medical frontliners. They deserve better than this…— jennylyn mercado (@MercadoJen) July 24, 2020
In a previous tweet, Mercado also lamented about how corruption still exists even amid the global health crisis that has dealt a huge blow to the Philippines, which is still under the world’s longest lockdown.
“It really is disgusting na kahit may pandemya (that even when there is a pandemic) corruption still exists,” Mercado said in an INQUIRER report about the resignation of three PhilHealth officials.
The said officials left their posts out of disgust with widespread corruption issues within the agency.
“Kelan kaya matitigil ang pananamantala ng mga tao na may kapangyarihan sa ordinaryong Pilipino?” Mercado stressed in the following tweet.
(When will people in power ever stop taking advantage of ordinary Filipinos?) /ra
Kelan kaya matitigil ang pananamantala ng mga tao na may kapangyarihan sa ordinaryong Pilipino?
— jennylyn mercado (@MercadoJen) July 24, 2020
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