Where to now?

Experts from London’s Imperial College and Sussex University define a country as having active transmission of a virus if at least 100 deaths have been reported, and at least 10 deaths were observed in each of the past two weeks.

The key data they are looking at is the reproductive number, RO (R naught). R0 is a mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease is. As an infection is transmitted to new people, it reproduces itself.

R0 tells you the average number of people who will contract a contagious disease from one person with that disease. It specifically applies to a population of people who were previously free of infection and haven’t been vaccinated.

Three possibilities exist for the potential transmission or decline of a disease, depending on its R0 value: If R0 is less than one, each existing infection causes less than one new infection. In this case, the disease will decline and eventually die out.

If R0 equals one, each existing infection causes one new infection. The disease will stay alive and stable, but there won’t be an outbreak or an epidemic.

If R0 is more than one, each existing infection causes more than one new infection. The disease will be transmitted between people, and there may be an outbreak or epidemic.

According to Imperial College London, we have 1.05 R as of May 24; 2.19 as of May 31. It means our COVID19 reproduction rate doubled in just a week.

I asked Edson Guido, who does the number crunching for ABS-CBN news analytics, what is the current R and he said it is around 1.2. I asked him if this is more current than the Imperial College number. He said yes “because the 2.19 is heavily influenced by the 1046 reported cases on May 29. But those cases were attributed to backlogs.

However, the number of new cases ranged from around 200 to over 400 last week. It is clear we are nowhere near controlling the spread of the virus. This is why the Palace spokesman warned NCR and other areas may revert to the stricter enhanced community quarantine or ECQ.

ABS-CBN news analytics’ Guido pointed out that cases are on an uptick, setting one recordhigh after another in recent days. It has even surpassed the number of reported late cases the past few days.

“And yet, do you know that... fresh cases might even be underreported? The 452 fresh cases reported June 10 was a record-high. More than 300 fresh cases were reported for the fifth time in the past week.”

As of last Saturday, the cases are higher still. COVID-19 cases in the country surpass 25,000; reported deaths are highest in more than a month: 607 cases reported, 504 fresh (246 in NCR) – both highest ever, 103 late for 25,392 total. There were 22 deaths, highest reported since May 12 for 1,074 total.

The government is still struggling to reach the 30,000 tests a day goal.

Despite the bad numbers, NCR and other areas were downgraded to the general community quarantine or GCQ. The need is strong to slowly reopen the economy.

We are now seeing how difficult it is for businesses trying to get back to normal. Some small businesses have decided to just close shop. Reimposing ECQ will have a disastrous effect on those still trying to recover.

Indeed, the World Bank has observed that the pandemic is taking a heavier toll on the Philippine economy than its neighboring countries. This, the WB said, is due to the government’s reliance on stringent lockdowns instead of early scaling up of its testing capacity and contact tracing efficiency.

Our economy will shrink by 1.9 percent this year, World Bank senior economist Rong Qian warned, as Filipinos have yet to see the full-extent of the coronavirus pandemic. Qian noted that the local coronavirus infections has “not yet peaked.”

The World Bank already downgraded its 2020 gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for the Philippines by as much as eight percentage points, among the largest revisions in Southeast Asia.

“I think part of the reason is because the Philippines is the first one to impose the very strict community quarantine, which basically shutdown the economy for almost two months,” Qian said.

“Vietnam was not doing that and they are more focusing on contact tracing and testing. So that’s explaining a large part of why the GDP downward revision is larger,” she added.

Lockdowns have been controversial worldwide. Health specialists see this as the easiest and most effective weapon in their arsenal against a new virus. But the prescription is worse than the disease because economies worldwide close down causing unemployment and hunger rates to kick up.

Lockdowns were instituted largely to prevent hospitals from being overrun by patients. New data suggest broad lockdowns are not needed in most places and in any case, proved insufficient in hotspots.

A policy paper from the Heritage Foundation urges policymakers to shift to responsible reopening based on evidence, with traditional public health interventions in hot spots.

Metro Manila, with more than 12 million people and contributing a third of the country’s gross domestic product, cannot bear more lockdowns.

For some reason, IATF, our government’s main policy group in charge of managing the COVID response appears to be struggling with what to do. It has opened up businesses in NCR through the GCQ rules, but limited the number of public utility vehicles to take workers to their workplaces.

They allowed a reckless launch of the Balik Probinsya program for publicity purposes, causing a fresh eruption of cases in the provinces from the unscreened program participants. Programs to bring stranded people and OFWs back to the provinces have also experienced serious snags.

It will be a mistake to close the economy down again just because it is the easiest option for the government to do. The contact tracing, manual or digital, must start in earnest. Random rapid testing should also be done so we will know more precisely, how much territory the coronavirus has spread to.