BUSINESSMAN Joey Concepcion, presidential adviser for entrepreneurship, on Wednesday said commercial activities must resume soon as the national economy can no longer sustain a prolonged lockdown.
“If we are forced to go into another lockdown, that will wreck the entire economy. When that happens, we will face a massive job loss. Can we afford another round of social amelioration? Even the stimulus package will not do any good in a stalled economy. So we cannot afford another lockdown,” he said in an interview aired over “Laging Handa” public briefing.
Concepcion said the immediate concern is to improve the government’s capacity to do reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests to the ideal 50,000 per day.
While the capacity upgrade is ongoing, he said Project ARK, a private sector initiative, is ramping up rapid testing for employees of private companies to complement the RT-PCR which is the more reliable test.
He announced the ongoing distribution of some 500,000 rapid test kits to the first batch of 205 private companies which ordered them.
“These tests that we are doing are very important because, by the end of month we are expected to move towards a GCQ (general community quarantine) and the more you open the economy, the more we will need frequent tests, not just once. We have to make testing not only accessible but affordable,” he said.
Concepcion’s support for rapid testing has received stinging criticisms from several sectors, including medical professionals who said rapid tests are not reliable and using them on employees would put them and their families in danger due to false assurances.
He countered that rapid testing kits are being used in several countries and have been credited for helping suppress the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Likewise, he noted that the same test kits are used on visitors to the presidential residence in Malacañang as well as by officials and employees of several of the country’s biggest companies.
“When you enter Malacañang, you will use the rapid test kits. That means the President himself is relying on these. The entrepreneurs the Ayalas, the owners of SM Group, the Lucio Tan Group of Companies, all the conglomerates, even us. All the big corporations believe in rapid test,” he pointed out.
Addressing critics, he stressed that considering the present capacity of the local hospitals, insisting on PCR testing is simply not possible.
“We can use the PCR but the question is — do we have the capacity? At present it can handle only 8,000 (tests) a day, so if you bring in the private sector that would not be enough. Our micro and small (industries) are crying out for help as their capital is draining away. For now this is all we’ve got, this rapid tests. The PCR test, how do we do that since there’s no capacity at present?” he said.
“The problem with these doctors, they keep talking and talking, but they are not doing anything other than complain. So my appeal to all of these doctors, if you have a better alternative, why don’t you tell us that better alternative? You want us to get the capacity of the PCR test? Well, there’s none!” he added.
Concepcion clarified that the rapid tests will be backed by continuing and parallel efforts to bring up RT-PCR capacity to the desired level of 50,000 tests a day.
He explained that other than the low testing capacity, many small private companies would also have a hard time finding the funds for their employees to take the RT-PCR tests which has an average tag price of P4,000.
“We want to see that the testing cost to go down. These rapid tests cost P450 per test kit, while the RT-PCR most will charge you P4,000 which is too expensive for the private sector per employee,” he said.
