Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez has proposed a shift in the tracking of new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases to those that are severe and critical once the country has reached a high vaccination rate.
Lopez told the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum yesterday this will become the basis for loosening quarantines and in reopening the economy,
Lopez said he made the proposal to the Inter-agency Task Force (IATF) on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases in its meeting on Tuesday so we can ” take a different view as we increase our vaccination rate.”
He did not elaborate on the desired percentage of vaccination but said “we should look at the data not on the number of cases but on the severe and critical. At the end of the day the concern is those that die (of COVID). If the cases are mild and asymptomatic, it’s just like having the flu,” Lopez said.
“We should then take care of the severe and critical cases, have all the ICU (intensive care units) , hospital rooms available for them,” he said.
Lopez said at present, only 2,000 or 2.7 percent of the active COVID cases can be considered severe and critical.
“The reality of COVID is that it keeps on coming back. When you get a good run, the surge returns. These are the speed bumps that we expect,” Lopez said.
He said budget can be set aside for preventive and immunity-boosting vitamins and mineral supplements to be given to communities especially the poor population.
“Vaccines of course will give us the security of a very low probability of having critical COVID. We should be tracking the historical numbers if the severe cases are going down as we increase the vaccinations,” he said.
Lopez said if the cases drop, there is a reason to reopen.
“But at the soonest possible time to the extent we can move down to MECQ (modified enhanced community quarantine) and do more granular lockdowns, we can manage to reopen.
We always go back to finetuning and balancing what can be opened. But in general we will allow bulk of the economy to be open especially essential activities ,while minimizing the non-essential ones ,” he said.
“We know the economic cost of the ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) but we had to listen to experts because we don’t want what happened in India and Indonesia happening here,” he added. – Irma Isip
