MANILA – For weeks now, the Philippines is experiencing a surge in the number of daily COVID-19 cases. The government, however, is responding to the pandemic as if it were only yesterday – still clueless, still grappling, still militarist. Since the pandemic broke last year, the likes of Josh San Pedro, a community health advocate and co-convenor of the Coalition of People’s Right to Health, has long been calling on the Philippine government to abandon its militarist approach and implement the guidelines set by health experts, including the World Health Organization (WHO), on mass testing, isolation, and proper treatment to finally break the local transmission of the deadly virus.