Extend GCQ in NCR for another month, Metro mayors recommend
Metro Manila mayors have recommended the extension of the General Community Quarantine (GCQ) status in the National Capital Region (NCR) for the whole month of October, San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora said yesterday.
The Metro Manila Council (MMC), composed of 16 city mayors and one town mayor in the metropolis, met with members of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Sunday night to present their recommendation.
Although the Metro mayors have recommended the extension of the GCQ period, Zamora said the final decision is still up to President Duterte who is expected to announce the next quarantine status in the country this week.
The National Task Force, and the OCTA Research group which has been studying the coronavirus outbreak in the Philippines, have also voiced their recommendation that NCR is not ready to be placed under the more relaxed Modified General Community Quarantine (MEFQ).
Open the economy in NCR
During the meeting of Metro Manila mayors, Zamora said that there were suggestions to further open up the economy in NCR “so that Metro Manila will not be hit too hard by the economic crunch.”
“Last night was a discussion regarding the mayors' recommendation as to the quarantine status of Metro Manila, and the general consensus is to maintain the GCQ which I’m also personally in favor of,” Zamora said in an interview over CNN Philippines.
He said “it is not anymore a question of health or the economy, but the focus is now health and the economy.”
“Even if we retain the GCQ status, it is possible to still slowly increase the operational capacity, meaning, the number of employees that can work, the number of customers that establishments can allow to enter. So these are the guidelines that are now being prepared for,” he said.
Zamora said that they are seeing “a sharp decrease” in the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Metro Manila under GCQ.
“This is something that really proves that all the interventions that we are implementing are working, specifically the trace, isolate, test, and treat,” he said.
Care capacity utilization
In terms of care capacity utilization, NCR is not at a level enough to be placed under the MGCQ, according to Deputy Chief Implementer and Testing Czar Secretary Vince Dizon .
"The numbers have been improving, but I think our capacity utilization or our available capacity is still not at the level," Dizon said during an interview with CNN Philippines.
Dizon said that despite a substantial decrease in the utilization of hospital beds and critical care beds going down to the 50 percent mark compared to the past couple of weeks when it was at 80 percent, the NCR is still not at MGCQ level yet.
Home quarantine
"So, we feel in the National Task Force (NTF) that home quarantine is a major factor in this, because even if the positive patient is asymptomatic, there are members of the household who are vulnerable, who are elderly, who have diabetes, who have heart disease. Then they can be infected by the asymptomatic patient," Dizon said.
Dizon said that they will address this, seeing it as a major challenge and that the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) will come up with the detailed guidelines on this.
He said they are optimistic since they have been able to arrest the spikes seen in the latter part of July and most of August.
He recalled that new cases peaked at more than 7,000 a day sometime in August and is now down to the 2,000 level. In the NCR and the greater Metro Manila area, cases peaked at 4,000 a day.
He said that the country has breached the 3.5-million test mark and is about to reach 3.6 million.
The government targets to test roughly 10 million by early next year which is approximately 10 percent of the population.
DOH warns not to be complacent Health
Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire in a virtual press briefing Monday said that based on the trend of reported cases, averages of cases per week have decreased to about 1,000 to 1,200 cases.
However, cases in some areas still record an increase.
“That’s why we always say that we cannot be complacent at this point. We still need to practice minimum health standards and remain vigilant,” Vergeire said.
The undersecretary stressed that “they are assuming” the recalibrated strategies put in place to handle the pandemic like the One Hospital Command and Oplan Kalinga have been working.
“We are assuming — this is still an assumption we still want to further analyze — that our recalibrated strategies have given a breather to our health system,” Vergeire said.
“The NCR (National Capital Region) is seen as the best example that we were able to really decongest our hospitals, the utilization decreased to a level, although it is still at warning level,” she added.
The Health official cited the Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic (CODE) which has provided the local government units further guidance on how to do active surveillance, and constant monitoring of patients.
Encouraging patients to transfer to quarantine facilities from self-isolation at home was also a crucial move for the downward trend of cases, Vergeire noted.
Severe, critical cases
The Health Department also stressed that while there has been an increase in the number of critical and severe cases of COVID-19, the increase is still under one percent, which is “not really significant.”
Whenever there is an increase in the absolute number of cases in the country, critical and severe cases may also increase, Vergeire noted.
By the end of August, an increase of .4 percent in these cases was recorded while a .5 percent increase was noted by September 22.
“So, in terms of percent on the increase of cases for severe and critical cases, it's not really significant because it is still less than one percent. Although, as I've said, because the absolute number increases, severe and critical cases also go up but looking at the proportion and the percentage of this across all the cases that we have right now, the increase is still less than 1 percent,” Vergeire explained.
“We still continue to monitor, especially these critical and severe cases so that they can be managed appropriately,” she added.
Clustering of cases
The increase of cases in certain areas in the country, according to the department, is due to the expanded protocols on testing, positive result turnout, and the active surveillance of local government units.
Based on the September 27 report on clustering, a total of 2,075 clusters (cumulative) were reported through the Health department’s event-based surveillance and response.
It was disclosed that 84.29 percent of these clusters are coming from the community, 5.06 percent are in hospitals and health facilities, 1.73 percent are from jails, while 8.92 percent are from other settings.
The regions with the highest number of areas with clustering were NCR, Region 4A, Region 7, and Region 3.
Continuous downward trend
The OCTA Research group, which has been studying the coronavirus outbreak in the Philippines, appealed to the public to continue doing their part such as strict observance of health protocols to enable the country's to stem the tide of the pandemic.
Citing his team's latest monitoring report, University of the Philippines (UP) professor Ranjit Rye said there is a continuous downward trend of COVID-19 cases in the country, especially in Metro Manila which is currently the epicenter of the pandemic in the Philippines.
Aside from this, the research group also observed that the reproduction number or "r-naught," which is used to measure the number of people one confirmed case can infect, is still below 1 and has further declined to 0.85 across the country, and 0.77 in the capital region.
“We were also surprised to see the r-naught decreased into 0.85. It has long been stuck at 0.9 for at least two weeks. Our projection is consistent that the number of cases is declining,” he said in Pilipino.
With this, he called on the public to remain vigilant and maintained the strict enforcement of the government's health and safety protocols, adding that citizens are now also considered as frontliners in the battle against COVID-19.
However, this improvement in the COVID-19 situation in the country is still not enough for Metro Manila to shift to the most relaxed community quarantine, said the UP professor.
According to Rye, the daily cases in the country, although decreased, is still high with an average of almost 3,000 across the country.
“The positivity rate needs to be below 10 percent and close to 5 percent. Now it is at 9 percent, down from the 12 percent recorded last week but we want it to go down even further. We still have a lot of things to do,” he explained in Pilipino.
With this, the group has recommended through its report to retain the General Community Quarantine (GCQ) status for Metro Manila until its "regional health indicators further improve, and qualify it for the Modified GCQ status."