The Philippines’ weak pandemic containment strategy coupled with a slow rollout of vaccination could lead to delayed economic recovery.
Ronald Mendoza, dean at the Ateneo de Manila School of Economics in his presentation at the Health of Nations webinar sponsored by the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines yesterday, said due to its weak pandemic containment response, the country may be stuck with on again, off again lockdown, which is severely damaging to the economy.
“If we fail to strengthen the (health and test, trace and treat) systems, then we squandered the time that the lockdown buys us,” Mendoza said, adding lockdowns give countries time to strengthen their systems in the fight against the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
“After over a year of the pandemic, it has become clear that lockdown is not the main measure for containment. In fact it’s a very, very expensive, very, very costly measure to contain COVID-19,” Mendoza said.
He said the country needs to shift to a strategy that contains the virus while at the same time offers it the flexibility to keep much of the economy moving right and working.
He added the delayed rollout of vaccination is compounded by vaccine hesitancy “to the extent that this may still be a challenge…”
“These are all likely to lead to delayed economic recovery so this is quite an unfortunate situation the Philippine needs to overcome,” he said.
He noted based on the emerging evidence, countries with highly adaptable healthcare systems, along with well-coordinated economic and social protection strategies, tend to fare better…they don’t necessarily need to rely on draconian lockdown and containment strategies so they can keep their economies operating, while at the same time keeping COVID-19 at bay,” Mendoza said.
These countries, he said, are able to graduate out of lockdowns faster as they have the confidence to actually bring back economic actors to run the economy again.
“They maintain effective containment strategies even with more relaxed mobility restrictions and more open economies and I believe that this is now the main emerging lesson in 2021, where we are coming to grips with the deeper understanding on what the new normal really is from this pandemic,” Mendoza added. – Irma Isip
