DOF sees further economic opening as workers get jabs
As the vaccination of essential workers has begun in Metro Manila, the Department of Finance (DOF) expects policymakers to take the next step of reopening the economy to allow workers to regain the jobs they lost during the COVID pandemic.
In an economic bulletin, Finance Undersecretary and chief economist Gil Beltran said containing the spread of the virus and preventing transmission rates from rising will
give the government an opportunity to resume economic activities at full capacity.
The vaccination of essential workers registered under priority list A4, he added, may lead to looser quarantine restrictions on commerce, trade and travel.
“The vaccination of economic frontliners has finally commenced, an important step in protecting the population and the subsequent easing of restrictions,” Beltran said. “It is imperative that health risks posed by the epidemic be managed effectively and efficiently, and its transmission arrested.”
He noted that the failure to manage local outbreaks might force the government to tighten rules on business and mobility.
Beltran also pointed out that, as the policy thrust will be upgraded from risk management to risk avoidance, the country might need to revert to another lockdown, which would mean that government will have to concentrate its efforts on trying to arrest the spread of the virus.
As a consequence, jobs will be lost – similar to what happened in the National Capital Region and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal when President Duterte reverted the status of the NCR Plus to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) from March 29 to April 11.
Although this was downgraded to a modified ECQ from April 12 to May 14, hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs due to business closures. As proof, the unemployment rate was recorded at 8.7 percent in April, from a pandemic low of 7.1 percent in March. Further, the number of jobless Filipinos worsened by around 700,000 to 4.14 million, from 3.44 million, as firms slashed their workplace capacity in compliance with limits set by the government.
However, Beltran noted that “this year, the recent imposition of stricter quarantine measures was more localized so that its effects on our employment were not as drastic compared to last year.”
He cited a Labor Force Survey that showed 43.27 million Filipinos are employed, as of April. This, he added, shows that the labor figures have improved since the government began easing business restrictions.
No-mask Christmas
An expert yesterday urged the government and the public to work together to achieve a “no-mask Christmas,” a goal that Malacañang said is attainable because of the ongoing efforts to contain the pandemic.
University of Santo Tomas biological sciences professor and OCTA Research fellow Fr. Nicanor Austriaco said the Philippines needs 33 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to contain the virus and 52 million doses to achieve herd immunity.
He explained that if herd immunity is achieved in the NCR plus eight – a collective term for Metro Manila, Bulacan, Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Pampanga, Rizal, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao – the rest of the country would be protected because surges always begin in Metro Manila.
“So how long will it take? We calculated: If 250,000 (vaccine doses is administered) per day, we will get to containment in October and herd immunity in November. And this is a realistic and attainable goal for all of us. So we have to imagine as a country a no-mask Christmas,” Austriaco said at a press briefing.
“Can we have a no-mask Christmas? What would it look like? It would look like what it was before... When that happens, we can begin to lift social distancing and masking arrangements... This is something that we can imagine. Let us all do this together, where we achieve herd immunity – the NCR plus eight by Christmas and the rest of the country, by sometime next year,” he explained.
Austriaco said COVID-19 containment would protect the country against future surges, and allow the further reopening of the economy and mask-less gatherings of vaccinated persons.
He added that although outbreaks may still happen during containment, the virus would struggle to spread widely through the population. He noted that herd immunity will protect the unvaccinated from the virus, starve the virus, and allow a return to the old normal.
To achieve containment, about 45 percent of the population of NCR plus eight or about 16.65 million people should be inoculated, a goal that requires 33.5 million vaccine doses, Austriaco said.
Herd immunity, on the other hand, requires the vaccination of at least 70 percent of the population of NCR plus eight or about 25.9 million, a threshold that requires 51.8 million doses of pandemic jabs.