A Catholic prelate on Monday urged young Filipinos to revive the Confraternity of San Roque by volunteering as healthcare workers to augment the workforce in health facilities for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) patients.

“On the feast day of San Roque, I wish to call on young people in all dioceses, especially in parishes named after San Roque, to help us revive the “Cofradias de San Roque” by volunteering to serve as ‘Health Care Volunteers’ to back up our healthcare workers, especially in quarantine facilities,” Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David said in a Facebook post.

Like the corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the business world, David said the Church should also promote its own CSR – Covid Special Response.

“I know what people in the corporate world understand by CSR—corporate social responsibility. Not bad for San Roque to be associated with such an acronym, no? Perhaps this CSR that we are promoting in the Church can be called our Covid Special Response?” he said.

David, vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said the volunteers may work in quarantine facilities not necessarily in the hospitals.

“I am referring to the care of Covid positive patients, not necessarily in the hospitals but in public or private quarantine facilities, including those who have opted for home quarantine,” he said.

David said the church can forge a partnership with the local government health officers and assist them in monitoring the quarantined patients particularly those without symptoms and with mild symptoms.

“For the moment we are mobilizing volunteers who can do mainly the online monitoring of Covid positives because we understand the risk of exposing them to infection if we deploy them to do physical monitoring. The ones we will mobilize for face-to-face monitoring are probably former Covid positives who have recovered already and have natural antibodies to fight a reinfection,” he said.

According to David, the volunteers can be trained by city and municipal health care officers, and also have them formally accredited as volunteers, with a proper definition of what they will be allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do.

“Each volunteer, depending on their capacity and availability, will be assigned a number of patients to monitor and are expected to report the progress of their patients to the accredited health officers in charge of them, on a daily basis,” he said.

At the same time, the CBCP official is hoping that the telecommunications company will provide cheap or free Wi-Fi for the volunteers to be able to communicate with patients. (PNA)