MEDICAL, NONMEDICAL TOOLS MUST GO WITH LOCKDOWNS—EXPERTS

THE government can maximize lockdowns and more stringent quarantine measures if these are implemented in tandem with other medical and nonmedical measures, according to economists.

These nonmedical measures include the provision of targeted cash transfers and food subsidies, Action for Economic Reforms (AER) Coordinator Filomeno Sta. Ana III told Businessmirror on Sunday.

“My concern in fact is that the current ECQ is short. Virus incubation takes two weeks more or less. The problem we have in doing lockdown is that our lockdown is ‘porous’, to use the World Bank term,” Sta. Ana said.

“The problem therefore is not lockdown per se (when it is unavoidable) but how we design the lockdown. Lockdown by itself is insufficient. Other medical and nonmedical measures are essential to gain the longer-term benefits from a timeout,” he added.

Sta. Ana also said the newly enacted Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) Act would do little to nil under the ECQ.

“CREATE is for the medium term and longer term. Ang makakatulong: ayuda [What will help are cash transfers]. Relief spending, which is not in place,” he said.

“Truth is, support won’t happen next week because government is not ready. But it has to be done if this government cares for the hungry and the unemployed. Hunger and unemployment won’t vanish just because ECQ is lifted,” Sta. Ana added.

Data analysis, testing

MEANWHILE, De La Salle University economist Maria Ella Oplas said the government should also focus on better data analysis and implement mass testing.

For one, mass testing should have been implemented as early as the onset of the pandemic, to trace all infected persons and isolate them as soon as possible, Oplas said.

She added that if mass testing were implemented now, the Philippine economy could remain open even without the arrival of vaccines to inoculate the population.

“How do we know that the vaccine can stop the latest strain of virus? Better management for the government means doing mass testing first. There would be no need for a lockdown if we have identified those who are positive,” Oplas said.

Sta. Ana said the lockdown is an“instrument of last resort to contain the surge.”however, he said the government and the public should not be fooled into thinking that the spread of the virus can be contained in a matter of weeks.

“Do you honestly think we will contain a surging virus in a week when all systems are dysfunctional? It really betrays a wrong mindset. A new rethinking has to happen,” Sta. Ana said.

Economic growth

FOR Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development (Acerd) Senior Fellow and John Gokongwei School of Management Dean Luis F. Dumlao, the ECQ will lead to a minimal impact on the economy.

Dumlao said if it weren’t for the spike in Covid-19 cases, the economy would have contracted 5.6 percent in the first three months of the year and grown 1.1 percent in the second quarter.

With the ECQ, the first quarter would see a deeper contraction. The worst case scenario for the second quarter, due to base effects, will be zero growth this year.

“Because ECQ happened so late in the first quarter, the further contraction will be mild. If ECQ and vaccination effectively slow down the spread of infections, lockdown may end just two weeks into the second quarter and we can still see positive growth in the second quarter,” Dumlao said.

“The only way the second quarter will have negative growth is to have a worse shutdown than what we had in the second quarter of 2020 which is the biggest contraction since 1947,” he added.

To Dumlao, if the ECQ and vaccinations slow down the spread of Covid-19 infections, the country’s lockdown may end two weeks into the second quarter, leading to a positive growth in the April to June period.

University of Asia and the Pacific School of Economics Dean Cid L. Terosa believes that at present, the ECQ imposed between March 29 and April 4, is too short to affect the economy.

Terosa also thinks the possibility of extending the ECQ beyond the second quarter of the year would be unlikely.

The government tightened the quarantine restrictions of the“travel bubble”in the National Capital Region (NCR) and its surrounding provinces, enforcing a full-scale lockdown starting Monday as Covid-19 cases breached the 9,000 mark on Saturday.

In an online press briefing, Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said President Duterte approved the recommendation of the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to reimpose ECQ in the said areas to slow down the surge of infections.

He said the declaration will also give the government time to open more quarantine and isolation facilities and allow medical workers to rest.