 Good day everyone and welcome to TVUP with the program health issues. This is your host, Dr. Teddy Herbosa. Last year we experienced the entry of a pandemic called COVID-19. Today we're experiencing a second surge of COVID-19. Last year we were at a loss of what to do with how to address this pandemic and several people in the University of the Philippines decided to band together to try to help the government fight the pandemic. We're very lucky today to have this group join us, led by our guest, the Executive Director of the UP Resilience Institute, Professor Mahar Lagmay. Hello. The Dean from the UP Graduate School in Las Baños, Jomar Abahante and Professor Peter Kaiton from the School of Statistics in UP Dileman. They will share with us the experience and the story of how the UP COVID-19 pandemic response team was formed. Mahar, about January last year the UPRI was struggling to fight another disaster which was the Taal Volcano Eruption, remember? Yes. Go ahead, tell us about that story. January 12, Taal Volcano erupted suddenly, catching everybody by surprise. A lot of tourists, weekend tourists all over Tagaitay Ridge and around Taal Lake. They took pictures of the eruption and that eruption was called or is called in the volcanological community as a pre-atomagmatic eruption where magma and the lake water in the main crater lake mixed and it generated an explosive event that gave rise to a plume that is about 17 kilometers high. Some say it's more than 20, about 21 kilometers. The ash that fell reached all the way to Nueva Isija and Nueva Biskaya but just in little amounts, Metro Manila also experienced the ash but closer to the volcano, there was a lot of ash that was spread by that eruption. It continued until a couple of days, slowly waning but throughout that time, it displaced a lot of people. People had to go to the evacuation centers. A lot of people were put at a discomfort because of the ash and that is actually quite dangerous. There's a disease called New Monosilito Volcano Cognosis. If I'm not mistaken, it's the longest word in the dictionary and that is a disease caused by the minute ash particles that get lodged into your lungs and after some time, you develop that disease. Throughout that period, when a lot of people were evacuated, the UP system volunteers were mobilized so we were busy helping the evacuees. We gave out tents, we sent food and a lot of other donations along with the UP men's basketball team. You know where to go back up, they all helped but UP had a concerted effort to help those that were in trouble. The month before or two months before, there was also something seminar that happened in Mindanao. So those were our initial types of work with UP, the entire UP system, where the UP system banded together to help our countrymen. But I think it was already in place since the time when Sendong happened that was in 2011 but not as organized as in the last couple of years. And then after that, after Taal, I think that was our preparation for the COVID pandemic. The reason why I'm saying this is because people were required to wear masks and right now we're also wearing masks. That's a very interesting story, Mahar because Resilience Institute was built in your geologist to actually address natural calamities like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes that you describe and meteorologic events. But suddenly our resilience is now being tested with this pandemic. It's already our second year into this pandemic. And luckily when the UPRI was formed and you headed it, you started not only research but you had operational response to all these different geological events that happened. So I think the platform of what you led was actually already there and maybe you should describe to the people what UPRI had because you had a NOAA project that looked at geographic information system and hazard mapping. You had a team that would go to a site and study the geologic event. So can you give me an idea of what UPRI did prior to the pandemic? Yes, that's correct. The question's on point. The beauty about the UP Resilience Institute is that it has this core component. The core component is called the UP NOAA Center. The UP NOAA Center has a lot of experience because of its researchers that have been working. We were able to maintain them because they have been working on this kind of work wherein IT is considered as very important developing a platform so that people can see the outputs of the research of the experts, the faculty members from the entire UP. NOAA, which stands for Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards, was a consolidation of all of the research outputs mainly from the University of the Philippines. There were a lot of experts working for NOAA researchers as well who started working on plots, landslides, and other kinds of hazards. Deploying real-time sensors all over the Philippines with the Department of Science and Technology, doing research using cutting-edge technologies for the benefit of the Filipinos so that we can become more resilient. Since 2017, the University of the Philippines adopted NOAA, and it's now called UP NOAA Center, maintaining a lot of those that have worked for NOAA from 2012 to 2016. That means that we had a lot of people who were experienced in doing this kind of work related to disaster risk reduction. In other words, we had a team of disaster scientists, researchers, professors, academics that were in one place, the UP Resilience Institute. At about that same time that the volcano erupted in Taal, there was a mysterious disease that occurred in a seafood market in Wuhan. This turned out to be what we all faced today, the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us the story of how the UP COVID-19 pandemic response team was eventually formed? Well, it was because of your order as the executive vice-president. Of course, upon the order. No, I ordered it because I was talking to you and you said you wanted to do something. That's what you told me. You said, can UPRI do something? And I said, of course, I'll help you. I said, let's form a whole team because you have the data scientists, you had the mapers, geologic mapers, you had the statistics people and you had the bioinformatics experts who were doing this thing for disaster. So I said, let's get together and it was initially informal but I decided as the EVP of UP we cannot make it work if it wasn't formalized. So I had to put together a formal piece of paper creating that team. But the idea was it you were really a disaster science institute. You were already looking at disaster risk reduction. You had the element. Yeah, that is right. In fact, we've been helping plan communities, local government units to become more resilient through anticipatory planning. We put their plans in their comprehensive land use plans, their climate, their CIDRA or climate and disaster risk assessment, their disaster risk reduction and management plans. That's what we've been doing. Now, when the COVID-19 problem arose what happened was yes, we received this order from the office of the president, signed by you with PDLC President Danilo Concepcion and when we received that what we did was we tried to contact as many people as we can faculty members, friends, researchers, students as well as volunteers, UD alumni who wanted to help fight COVID-19 and the response was very good. In fact, before this pandemic I did not know Jomar. Peter, I know somehow but not as close as now because Peter is a friend of, I think, BA I think he's been helping out with some other statistical work on weather-related problems and when we made the call for volunteers to help in the effort to fight COVID there was a huge response. Wonderful. Really a huge response. You can really see that the UP people the students, alumni, the faculty they lived sa pagalog para sa bayan. So we got all these volunteers helping out with a lens from disaster risk reduction. So the people that all volunteered were looking at COVID-19 or the pandemic from a DRR lens. That's what I noticed. That's right. So everybody wanted to help. What we needed to do was organize it. And the reason why we had a platform now called as NPOV.PH I don't remember baby Jomar and Peter can tell us why where the word NPOV... Wait, before it talks that maybe you have to tell them how we met and how we talked and formulated stuff. We used a platform called Facebook Messenger. Remember? All communications were through either Facebook Messenger or Viber. In fact, if I'm not mistaken I have more than 50 Facebook groups Messenger groups because you cannot put them all together although we have one main. There are many that we need to talk to separately. So the NPOV actually it was a suggestion by the GIS Mappers from UNBEI. And that was the platform by which we show all of the outputs of the experts and volunteers coming from the University of the Philippine system. Again, I'd like to emphasize system because it's not only Diliman. It's not only Manila. It's not only LB. The mathematicians have grouped together mathematicians of UP Mindanao, UP Pisayas. They call themselves as the one UP modeling group if I'm not mistaken. So the NPOV platform is really to showcase what we have done as outputs related to the COVID pandemic. But before we go to the NPOV I'd like to tell the story to the audience and the people watching on how I met also some of the most important ones. Maybe I'll go to Jomar. Professor Jomar Rabahante. Dean Jomar. Now he's the Dean. At that time he was just a professor. Jomar. I think Jomar together with a veterinary professor who's doing his PhD in UC Davis Darwin Bandoy were instrumental in describing in our messenger groups the importance of mathematical modeling for this biologic event for this particular epidemic. So maybe I can call on Jomar to tell the story of his contribution in the field of bioinformatics and how you actually convinced Mahar and myself, me being a medical doctor on the use of your science and tell us more a little bit about bioinformatics. Jomar. Yes. Good afternoon, EVP Ted. This work about COVID-19 actually started around February pa. We still don't have the ECQ. We are already doing some simulations, mathematical models February pa lang. Because in UPLB we had the issue of whether we're going to continue the February or not. Yes, yes, yes. We know there are already people from Wuhan or China coming to the Philippines but we're still not closing our borders. So there were some discussions if we're going to continue the February or not. So some administrators in UPLB asked us to do some modeling. But the good well, COVID is not a good thing. But the good thing that probably this pandemic brought us is we were able to create a network. The mathematicians all over the UP system from Baguio, Diliman, LB, Pisayas, Mindanao, Cebu, Cebu. We already have this kind of group we call ourselves as mathematical biologists. We actually have our annual workshops starting 2018 we had that in Cebu and then Bohol 2019 then 2020 in LB that's January. January we had our workshop and the focus of that workshop is mathematical epidemiology. And of course we are already doing some works with projects but not in terms of COVID macroparasite dengue. We already have those kinds of projects but we didn't realize that after January our work will be highlighted in a big scale national scale because of this COVID-19. So Well, Jomar, to tell you frankly I was under secretary of health prior to being EVP and had I known that there was this one mathematics group that does bioinformatics I would have dragged you all in to all the epidemics that we handled we had MERSCOV we had that mysterious disease in Mindanao we had all this cholera outbreak in Katandwanes and I know that there was a bioinformatics expertise in the UP system I would have topped that so this was a discovery as well like Mahar we discovered the you the bioinformatics how do you call it? Mathematicians but the people in mathematical biology and you you showed us very nice projections in the beginning in our remember you were sharing your graphs in our messenger discussion groups and I was sharing it to my doctor friends who were also being alarmed at the projections and everything so tell us more about how you developed those you were running the numbers through a SEIR modeling something the SEIR modeling is actually one of the very basic models that we study in mathematical epidemiology and as you can see it's just a purely few sets of equations and very easy to run but what we found out is that even with this very simple mathematical equations we can somehow do some projections to tell the people what might be the strategic move to inhibit or control the further spread of COVID-19 virus there are more complicated models but we see that during the early stage of the pandemic it's very important to have a very simple model so we can explain to the public that's actually the challenge because we can make our projections our models very complicated but it will not be our results will not be sort of it will not be around I understood your models I'm a doctor I'm no mathematical that's why I went to medicine I hated mathematics and projection I was consolidating it with my knowledge of epidemiology and disease those graphs were very clear to me and I just wish I had those information later it was useful to me it was useful to the people that were going to look at our website so let me go to Peter because Peter is our statistician expert and when he came in he started crunching while government and he had this compendium he had this compendium of what happens in every barangay in every city so Peter can you tell us how your role came in converting your statistical knowledge into useful information for all of us in this pandemic so before I came into the UP COVID-19 pandemic response team I'm typically commenting about the statistics going around because even before the ECQ in March 2020 there have been a lot of these projections done by Jomar, done by Darwin and also done by different experts and I'm just atinaya group a lot of groups in fact a lot of groups so I've been looking at the different models and critiquing them into social media and then I got folded into one group where Jomar is a part of and then through Jomar I got pulled into the UP COVID-19 pandemic response team then you were now feeding us with your compendium which was a fantastic amount of information by the way, I love your virtual background can you tell us who they are they are a lot of the members of the UP COVID-19 pandemic response team so as Dr. Mahar has said the team is part of a lot of individuals coming from Baguio to Davao and this is just a small group of that larger group of that system cooperation for us to tackle the current crisis that we are in and we've never met each other we've never met each other in the pandemic response we have never physically been in one conference room or one meeting room discussing the pandemic Mahar, can I ask you how was it to be able to get together so the team was formed there were volunteers that came in you had bioinformatics experts mathematical epidemiologists you have statisticians coming in we also had other experts right Mahar coms experts and governance experts tell us about those yeah that's right social media played a big part in consolidating everybody into the UP pandemic response team the network as well the UP network it started by making the call and the executive order that was the memo memorandum that was received I knew some friends I had some friends from high school na nasama and I think they knew Jomar so we established that Facebook group and then people started to invite people that they knew and when they got in pandemic response team bringing people together to work on the problem so it's a group composed of statisticians mathematicians mappers geographers people from NCPAC social scientists as well in fact there's a pandemic response for a group for social scientists and integrated with the psychologists we had one part in the ENCOG a platform for psychological consultation people from NCPAC people from sociology public health epidemiology from Los Baños marami rin mathematicians and you also had filmmakers filmmakers it only goes to show that the problem cuts across all sectors it's not just one field it's really interdisciplinary because you have to make as Jomar was saying make the science embraced by the people and to be able to do that at a holistic view not just your engineering or not just your science but you really have to get them together to be able to have a better approach to the problem so let's talk about that you you're always on TV you had your own disaster show in a radio but suddenly suddenly during the pandemic last year I started to see on television a Jomar Rabahante and Peter Kaiton being interviewed on GMA on ANC on radio or double B so Jomar and Peter Jomar first you were doing stuff but you were translating it to the people on mainstream media can you tell us about that role as a scientist as a mathematician it's actually very hard to talk in front of the camera and talking to various kinds of audience because first I'm not trained as a risk communicator but of course there were some trainings on how to translate our math, our science to simple language but definitely it's really a first time for me to do that but I think the highlight there is is very valuable to all of us and I think from that point of view people were able to realize this problem is not just a usual problem it is a science problem it is a problem that needs cooperation among disciplines and there are many models that we created we did not just create an epidemiological model but also with socio-economic so we created JAB risk calculator we created the workplace microsimulator so that people will realize that this is not just a usual problem not just an academic problem it's a science problem that for the people that will help many many solutions in your portfolio that you were bringing out directly from now not in a scientific journal or not a mathematics journal but in mainstream media being interviewed by probably someone who doesn't understand mathematics an announcer who doesn't understand modeling and projection and you have to explain all of this so it's a fairly new thing for you guys Peter you were also interviewed quite often at juncture last year when there was so much unknown you provided science statistics probabilities that helped the people calm down and understand and your voice is kind of very authoritative to me when I listen to you you talk like a professor and do what you are talking about tell me about that experience being on the limelight all these TV stations and radio stations to explain what the hell what happened so statistics is a very hard pill to swallow but we try our best to really convey the statistics the data that we have in terms of something that could be digestible to the people I wouldn't say that I'm much of an expert in that kind of work in terms of making statistics the numbers, the data easily absorbable but the experience there is really something of really addressing the questions of media really addressing the questions of the people that I interact with and it doesn't just stop with me talking about the numbers I'm always guided by the team that is at my back literally right now in terms of providing me the context in terms of the statistics and the data that would really bring the message to the people that's right you were like gods at that time you guys that were doing the scrunching the numbers you were just the people we had to hang on to because you were like the prophets like if you talked about biblical times you were the prophets of telling what's going to happen to the pandemic what's going to happen to our community because you were giving us the mathematical computations of the probabilities of what happens next month, next week and the cases in that particular time let me go back to Mahar after all of these products of these mathematical models and all this particular end call dashboard you came out with what we called policy papers what did you call it? initially we had the statements being issued by the UP pandemic response team and I think the first statement was preparing for post-ECQ scenarios analysis and recommendations and we came up with several other statements and briefers as well but eventually we slowed down on it and stopped because it was in my opinion maybe there are other opinions creating some kind of friction or whatever but we still maintain the information dissemination through the end of that pH but the statements we short of told down on that because we knew or at least our perception was that if there are comments that are negative that would also go back to us thinking along those lines we tried to slow it down maybe I'll ask John Mar and Peter John Mar and Peter were good contributors to this policy papers in fact there were a lot of contributors John Mar and Peter not just the mathematicians but also the sociologists all of those who contributed the other the other statements were on modified community quarantine estimating local healthcare capacity addressing the immediate needs of all especially the most vulnerable sectors social interaction and post-PCQ et cetera I remember we were one of the first to come out with an analysis of the health system from the healthcare worker to the bed capacity we were the first one to actually show that that's what was the situation and what would happen if there were this many cases Yes, EBP but I'd like to highlight two very important things in the work that we're doing here in fact in the first policy policy statement we already tried to highlight the importance of data because the data is going to be used or have to be used to generate information and that information will not become knowledge unless it becomes useful or is used by the people So, yunong isang very basic na principle na ginagamit we have to trust in the data we have to have that data because the data that is analyzed basis in policy decision policy making and policy decisions so the integrity of data is very important and number two, the second principle that we we tried to do or that guided us was that all of these statements if you look at it they were anticipatory we used the data so that we can anticipate and before those scenarios happened we could have already addressed those problems it's not just current data we don't do it at the last minute as a response but we do the anticipatory plans and activities and actions long before they happen so that is what those are the guiding principles at disaster risk reduction which COVID-19 is one that we consider as a hazard that has blown up into a disaster So, I'll ask Peter so that's very interesting it's all about data and Peter, you crunched the data you crunched the numbers you even criticized the source of the data I saw your very academic notes and the data being presented by our own department of health like a professor critiquing a thesis tell me about what you thought about how data was being handled or mishandled by the government at that time we had COVID-19 the working principle for me in terms of looking at the data is to reflect that these data there are people these are people by the correct way that we collect that we validate the data that we present the data we are giving justice to the experiences of people who are currently sick who have recovered and has sadly left us in this world rest in peace So, it is by correcting the presentation validating properly taking note of the different changes that the DOH is doing with the data that is in fact in a way giving respect to the people behind those numbers the people of which the story of them is what we are looking at No wonder you love your work so much when you look at those numbers you actually see people when you look at those numbers are wrong, you feel bad because they had late debts and early debts all that stuff that you were questioning about, you made circles on them et cetera very interesting Jomar, you were called by a multilateral bank a multilateral bank started to look at your work because of our projections and our policy papers they gave you additional work can you tell me about that were in some professional economists or financial people started to get your help as a mathematician bioepidemiologic mathematician I think the baseline there is during our first ECQ March 15, 17 the idea of ECQ is not actually to be permanent temporary only to buy as time so our group the philosophy behind our work with my group is that ECQ is very temporary and we should be fast in providing strategies or recommendations to all sectors not just with the government because if we're going to be so slow in providing strategies tapos na ECQ we don't have much time anymore to increase our healthcare capacity so it's very late we know some of the official groups who should provide those numbers release their estimates very late but as early as April we release these are the numbers in terms of the healthcare capacity these are the points of interventions where we can control the situation so because of that I think because of that philosophy many sectors NGOs financial institutions ask us to help them because they know that we can provide as fast as possible what they need in fact you complained to me there was one private company who got your graph and then put their label into it tell me about that story we didn't complain but because you noted it to me I had to tell them please recognize the author of this particular graph I'll just provide of course there's some issue but I think the positive side with that is private sector we're able to understand the gravity of the situation because before first week of the ECQ they didn't realize that COVID-19 issue is very serious and then they were just thinking after a week of lockdown they're going to be back but I told them no this might be a long term issue and the solution here one of the solution here is to have vaccine which might arrive later so that's the only time they realized okay this will affect their businesses this will affect their work so I think with that we were able to convince them about the gravity of the situation and I think that's a good contribution of the UP group to the economy to the economy thank you Peter you were also being mentioned by other people you got all the know-how you got all the statistics of the different local governments and started to provide information to them tell me more about how that became useful to the local governments were they contacting you or their epidemiology units contacting you or use of what you compound your compendium so what happened with that is coming from the statistical activities that we've done I've also done some work with local government units in terms of empowering them with the data that they have so that they could also make the decisions on the ground in terms of the speed of transmission through the reproduction number the tracking of recoveries and deaths in their area and this goes down to even the barangay level of which in some instances, in some LGUs we are also able to provide the rate of transmission through the reproduction number how fast COVID is spreading through the barangays and in addition to that more recently we've had gained a lot of exposure with the kind of maps that UP COVID-19 pandemic response team is producing in terms of showing the story of the situation of COVID-19 really through the maps the density of cases that are we've been doing this for NCR for quite a while and more recently with the work that we're doing the mappers of the UPD Resilience Institute, we've been slowly expanding them to the adjacent regions of NCR and in the future we will make that more interactive with the whole country you educated me about the RT because at that time I only know of the reproductive number or the R naught but then you came up with a figure in one of our threads of discussion the time-varying reproductive number or RT tell me a little bit about that and how that came about and how it became used by everyone by all the modelers and all the people making projections with regards to RT it's really a novel research of this millennia the way to monitor in real time the spread of the transmission of any epidemic we just patterned it for COVID-19 now still there is this growth of research about the time-varying reproduction number but it is that very important metric even recognized by the World Health Organization so let me just describe what RT is so given that you have previously previously infected cases of COVID-19 for our situation how many do we typically expect them to spread to other cases as well for a person that's typically COVID-19 how many would they pass it on to others and the way that we analyze it is so long as it is greater than one than the pandemic is still transmissing exponentially if it's in less than one then it means that the pandemic is slowing down to a point that new cases are getting less and less and then the WHO has embraced this statistic more recently Fantastic and we went all the way down to an RT of 0.6 but now it's again 1.4 or 1.5 so very useful guy Mahar, you were called tumalakan niyang because of all of this data produced by this all your dashboards and MCO you were called tumalakan niyang how was that experience that is something that I think UP needs to do more we've been doing that during the time of NOAA from 2012 to 2017 but I think it needs to be expanded because the UP faculty the experts from UP have a lot of things to say have a lot to say about data and analysis of the data sense because after all a lot of the experts are taught by UP faculty and a lot of the things that they work on are real life matters such as this pandemic we just communicated we just communicated what the UP people had to say and I think what Mahar was saying at that time was something about interaction of the age groups which I think had a lot of influence on the decision also to shut down the physical schools that's one and there were others I think I was also given the opportunity to speak to the public the following day basically what I'm saying is that that should be done more when it comes and you connected with the DILG secretary also excuse me? you connected with the DILG secretary secretary annual remember after that they search you out and ask you to help them in the local government in fact after the presentation I remember receiving a small note a small note a small note that is my daughter a small note a slip with a note from secretary annual to talk afterwards and we were actually we met up and then we talked about the system to generate the data from the LGUs and the reason why we tried to do that was because we needed to maximize the potential of digital technology it cannot be all hard copies then you send it and then translate it we must take advantage of digital technology because we have to act faster make use of technologies and be faster than the virus as of the moment our infrastructure the internet with regards to the internet the internet is much lower than the virus so we need to we need to work on that we need to have done that a long time ago and that could have helped we were trying to maximize that by getting the data from the LGUs so that Peter and Joamar and the rest of the UP team could work on these data sets well my time is up for this episode so parting words from each one of you maybe Joamar, you start with you then Peter and then Mahar one of the lessons that I've learned from this UP COVID-19 pandemic response team is to trust your colleagues like a family actually as a scientist sometimes we are sort of thinking no one should correct me like that in this group I learned not to be insecure if people will comment will critique my work and with that actually we were able to discuss fruitfully what are the best models how to improve our models even with Peter Peter would tell me Joamar we need to do some resimulation of our work because the cases are going out of the trap so we do that as an adaptive system so we can help the community without any insecurity as a scientist I think this is the science that we need now to be able to improve our work without thinking how our ego will be that's the lesson that I learned from collaboration in disaster risk with us we call that collaboration Peter final words from you for me I really started as a statistician in economics and finance and then with how I'm doing with a lot of the statistics for COVID-19 and for the UP COVID-19 pandemic response team it's really built from the knowledge and insights coming from the team coming from the different experts the pool of faculty, the pool of researchers that are in the team that makes me bring the message of the data to our people to a wider audience and to a better platform thank you the word team was so appropriate Mahar what were your learnings or lessons from this pandemic team well we learned something new every day we keep on learning I have learned a lot from the people from the pandemic response team from Jomar Peter and I think what is important is that during problem during times where we have a crisis that we really work together especially for disaster risk deduction the Sendai framework tells us that it has to be a whole of society approach and it must be a science based approach we have a very good contribution sa UP system in terms of the knowledge that all of these talents that we have in the UP pandemic response team has offered or can offer and we need to build that community because science is the one that can deliver us from all of these hardships, all of these crisis that we are experiencing we trust in science because science works thank you very much Professor Mahar Professor Peter and Professor Dean Jomar thank you very much for joining us this needs another issue of health issues because we still have to discuss our dashboard and all the data and how we manage data but today I'd like to thank all three of you for telling us the story of how we were able to contribute to the country's response from the point of view of academia from the point of view of scientists all doing three things that I learned in disaster school the three C's of disasters command meaning having a structure collaboration meaning different specialists taking care of everything and third communications making sure that the knowledge you create is communicated to the people this is Dr. Tedad Bosa thank you very much for joining us in today's health issues at TV UP