THE government is already looking at the possibility of lifting the state of national health emergency in the country before the fourth quarter of this year despite the pandemic still ongoing.
According to Department of Health (DOH) Officer-in-Charge Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, part of the directive of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is to bring back the country to a normal situation.
The DOH official confirmed that the government has already started studying if it is already feasible to lift the state of calamity or state of national health emergency because if it is lifted by September, the issue of emergency authority for vaccines, clearance and certificates of the vaccines against COVID-19, and even price caps for medicines should be put into consideration.
Even legal issues are among those being studied today by the Food and Drug Administration.
Vergeire added that the government and the public must be confident enough that it can control the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.