Govt reviews policy amid virus surge
THE Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) is reexamining its decision to ease quarantine restrictions after the country recorded over 3,000 new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in a single day last week.
National Task Force against Covid-19 Deputy Chief Implementer and testing czar Vince Dizon said there was a need to review the government’s policy favoring the reopening of more businesses and allowing the freer movement of people to speed up economic recovery.
“Nire-review po namin ngayon yung mga desisyon nung mga nakaraang linggo dahil mayroon pong malaking pagkakaiba n’ung ginawa ‘yung mga
desisyon na ‘yun na magluluwag tayo ng konti (We are reviewing the decisions made in the past weeks because the situation was different when we made decisions to ease restrictions),” he said during the rollout of AstraZeneca vaccines in Laguna on Sunday.
The decision to gradually shift to a more lenient quarantine was made at a time when there were only 1,500 new Covid-19 cases a day. The daily caseload has since jumped to more than 3,000, so there is a need to be flexible, he said.
Metro Manila and other key areas in the country have slowly transitioned from a hard lockdown during the early stages of the pandemic to the less restrictive general community quarantine (GCQ).
Early this year, there were suggestions to shift to the most lenient modified GCQ, but President Rodrigo Duterte was against it.
Last February, the IATF-EID allowed the reopening of cinemas, game arcades and limited tourist attractions in GCQ areas. It also increased the crowd capacity for religious services.
Travel requirements have been relaxed as well, with travelers no longer required to take a Covid-19 test and undergo mandatory quarantine, unless the local government unit (LGU) in their destination requires it.
On Saturday, the Department of Health reported 3,439 new Covid-19 cases, the biggest daily count since Oct. 12, 2020.
To address the spike, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the government now favors granular or localized lockdowns to a prolonged general quarantine as a way of containing a spike in Covid cases.
Dizon expressed confidence the country can address the rising Covid-19 cases.
“Naniniwala kami na kung kinaya natin ‘yung July and August surge na ang Metro Manila lang eh umabot ng 4,500 cases per day, kampante kami na kakayanin natin kahit na itong nakikita natin ngayon (We believe that if we were able to address the surge in Metro Manila in July and August, when cases reached 4,500 per day, we can do this again despite what we see now),” he said.
Government figures on the rising Covid cases were corroborated by OCTA Research on Sunday, which projected that the country could have up to 6,000 Covid cases a day by the end of the month.
OCTA said Metro Manila averaged 1,025 cases from February 28 to March 6, a 42-percent increase from the previous week and 130 percent from two weeks ago.
“Based on our analysis of the data and the past trends in the NCR (National Capital Region or Metro Manila), we believe that a surge is already underway in some LGUs in the region,” OCTA said in its report.
Metro Manila’s reproduction number also increased to 1.66, which was last seen since July last year.
OCTA said “this surge is spreading more quickly than the JulyAugust surge, and this suggests the possibility that the surge is driven by SARS-CoV-2 variants.”
SARS-CoV-2 is the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, which causes Covid-19.
The reproduction number or R0 is a gauge of how infectious a disease is. A R0 of 1 means that an infected person can pass on the virus to only one person.
The higher the R0, the more infectious the virus.
Given the higher reproduction number, Metro Manila is projected to have 2,000 new Covid-19 cases from March 21 and 3,000 new infections by March 31.
OCTA also believed that the surge in Metro Manila is caused by the virus’ United Kingdom and South African variants, which have been detected in the region.
“While this still needs to be confirmed by genome sequencing, we believe that the surge may be driven by new and more contagious and lethal variants that could overwhelm the region if left unabated in the next few weeks,” the agency said.
While OCTA considers the surge a “cause for concern,” it said it was still in its early stages and “can still be mitigated or even reversed.”
The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) also noted an increase in Covidpositive cases in its swab tests.
PRC molecular laboratory head Pauline Ubial said the positivity rate of the cases had risen since February.
“In January and December the positivity rate only reached 2 to 4 percent,” Ubial said in Filipino in a radio DZMM interview. “But now, we have a 7- to 11-percent positivity rate in our laboratories.”
The World Health Organization recommends a positivity rate of less than 5 percent for at least 14 days before it is safe enough for a country to lift restrictions and induce economic growth.
The PRC, which leads in swab testing nationwide, has done more than 2 million tests, or 24 percent of the national testing output, and 37 percent of tests in Metro Manila.