THE Philippines, under a baseline enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) scenario, is projected to have around 8.5 million individuals infected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) by September.
Thus, “aggressive” efforts are needed to suppress the pandemic, according to a study released by the state think-tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) on Wednesday.
A discussion paper published by PIDS, titled “Projected disease transmission, health system requirements, and macroeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 in the Philippines” said there will be around a million projected deaths at the peak of the outbreak, under the current ECQ conditions.
Under this scenario, the Luzon-wide ECQ ends by April 12, or May 10, 2020, at the latest. Symptomatic cases are isolated when they contact the health system, and that the majority of individuals follow ECQ guidelines. The ECQ compliance is assumed to be at 95 percent, while in the post-ECQ period, everyone is free to move out of their households, but symptomatic cases are still isolated when they contact the health system with a reduced compliance of 50 percent.
The report said isolating 70 percent of symptomatic cases, even with the partial lifting of ECQ, will drastically reduce the number of infected cases on the peak day to only 900,000 cases, with the peak predicted to occur much later in May or June 2021. The cumulative deaths as of peak day will also be reduced to, at most, 431,000.
“Based on our disease transmission model, we project that aggressive efforts in the post-ECQ period to isolate at least 70 percent of infectious cases through better contact tracing, social distancing, individual or household isolation, and reduced delays in time to seek care for symptomatic cases are necessary to suppress the outbreak,” the report said.
“Otherwise, lifting the ECQ but maintaining current conditions of delayed time to seek care for symptomatic cases merely delays the progression of the outbreak but still results in around eight percent of the population infected,” it added.
The report said that for all scenarios that do not successfully isolate at least 70 percent of infectious individuals, demands for health care resources generated by COVID-19 at the peak of the outbreak far exceed available supply in the health sector.
“For example, assuming no further improvements in the ability to isolate symptomatic cases post-ECQ, the country’s health system would require 1.51 million beds, 456,000 intensive care unit beds, 246,000 ventilators, 727,000 doctors, a million nurses, 91,000 medical specialists, and 36 million personal protective equipment sets on the peak day of the outbreak in August 2020,” the document said.
The report said projections also suggest that the Philippine economy may lose between P276.3 billion (best case) and P2.5 trillion (worse case) due to COVID-19.
“The transport, storage, and communication sector is expected to suffer substantial losses because of expected declines in tourism (P11.7 billion to P124.3 billion). Other services (P41.5 billion to P356.9 billion), manufacturing (P82.1 billion to P855.2 billion), and wholesale and retail trade (P93.2 billion to P724.8 billion) are projected to be substantially negatively affected by weaker global and domestic demand,” the paper said.
“Extending the ECQ by one more month may potentially cost the Philippine economy at least P150 billion due to possible declines in household consumption as workers remain unemployed for longer periods,” it added.
The report said that had ongoing interventions not been implemented, the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Philippines would occur in the month of August 2020 with approximately 18 percent of the whole Philippine population, or 18.9 million infected with the virus.
