Vaccines key to ‘new normal’

VACCINATING “ambitiously” against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) is critical in attaining sustained economic recovery, economist-lawmakers at the House of Representatives said.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman and Albay Second District Rep. Joey Salceda stressed that while easing community quarantine restrictions could help revive the ailing economy, the quick rollout of the vaccination program must be top priority to prevent a surge of infections that a reopening “will no doubt cause.”

“Reopening will definitely help the economy, but we have to reopen for the right reasons. Otherwise, we will not be able to sustain the reopening. We have to vaccinate ambitiously so that we can sustain reopening, and perhaps even

open further than GCQ (general community quarantine),” he said.

Deputy Minority Leader and Marikina City Second District Stella Luz Quimbo, also an economist, said vaccines are “urgently needed to avert” the economic losses and “get us onto the road to recovery.”

“The Covid vaccine will be the main tool at our disposal to tread the path towards the new normal,” she added.

Both lawmakers were concerned with the record-high contraction of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which plunged to 9.5 percent in 2020 or equivalent to an economic loss of about P3.2 trillion. According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), during the peak of quarantine restrictions, the GDP dropped by as much as 16.9 percent and the unemployment rate increased to 17.7 percent.

NEDA estimated that each week of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) or modified ECQ in the National Capital Region and adjacent regions stripped off 0.28 percentage points from the GDP growth or equivalent to around P2.1 billion in lost wages per day.

Salceda projected that relaxing to modified GCQ or MGCQ — the most lax restriction — for the rest of the year could lead to a 1.8 percent higher GDP compared to remaining under GCQ.

Quimbo said under GCQ, “we lose P700 million in income per day.”

Thus, the lawmakers stressed the critical role of vaccination.

“Reopening has to be for the right reasons. Otherwise, we will be forced to close again,” Salceda said.

For Quimbo, the “trigger” to transitioning to MGCQ must be the number of new infections per population. She said that reopening must be pre-determined based on the infection rate. If cases increase, there is a need to return to GCQ.

Quimbo said that if vaccination works, the number of new infections per population would drop but chances of getting infected is still possible.