State and Philippine Society in the Time of the Pandemic 91 private sector, civil society, communities, academia, media, voluntary associations, families and individuals to strengthen the resilience of communities and society as a whole, (and) affirmative action (through) partnership building … at all levels of governance—global, national, local/provincial, and community … (that are) multisectoral and intersectoral” (Ofreneo 2020). As vividly narrated by the five case studies in this report, communities at the local level are able to derive the proper understanding of the gravity of the crisis and are capable of carrying out the necessary measures to contain the spread of the virus in their own localities. But since they are hampered by a lack of resources, they need the support of government bodies in order to effectively carry out their own pandemic control systems. Develop a master plan for addressing the COVID-19 crisis It has been observed that the government has, so far, yet to present a concrete master plan to address the continued rise of COVID-19 cases. This was expected to be unveiled during President Rodrigo Duterte’s State of the Nation Address on July 27, 2020. But other than urging Congress to pass a new SAP measure, asking economic players to make adjustments, vowing to set up more online systems to streamline bureaucratic processes, and a few long-term economic initiatives, no master plan was clearly laid out (Ranada 2020). Restructure and reorganize the management system of the health crisis The issue of competence and governance has to be radically rethought. As had been pointed out above, the direction and administration of the government’s COVID-19 response has been largely placed in the hands of the military—mainly retired generals, most of whom occupy senior Cabinet positions. Not a single epidemiologist or public health care expert is in a major decision-making position. It would appear, therefore, that the pandemic is seen mainly as a law and order issue and only secondarily as a health concern. As narrated above, this militarized approach has, in some cases, been accompanied by human rights violations, particularly of poor and disadvantaged communities. The National Task Force Against COVID-19 must therefore be reconstituted by bringing in public health experts (i.e., doctors, nurses, and midwives), academics from the social sciences, humanities, and basic sciences, civil society organizations, sectoral groups from organized labor, urban poor, informal sector, farmers/fisherfolk, women, students, indigenous communities, and representatives of other marginalized sectors. Address concerns about the reliability and availability of data No less than Vice President Leni Robredo has pointed to the importance of sound and accurate data in making informed decisions in order “to determine who and what