Albay Rep. Joey Salceda. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Placing the country under a less-restrictive quarantine status to revive the economy will only bring “marginal” effects unless the Covid-19 vaccination comes first, a lawmaker said Tuesday.
Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Salceda said this after the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) chief Karl Chua advised President Rodrigo Duterte to place the entire country under modified general community quarantine by March.
“To be frank with you, even if other places of business are reopened, if we are unable to vaccinate our healthcare workers, we will just have to reimpose restrictions once our facilities get overwhelmed and our frontliners start getting sick again,” Salceda said in a statement.
Salceda also warned of the “depression” in our country’s spending power, saying that opening sectors would not necessarily get people to spend.
“Opening is one thing, getting customers to spend is another. Ultimately, I do not disagree with the proposal to reopen more sectors, but its impact will be very marginal compared to expediting vaccination,” he said.
Salceda, however, supported the calls to opening of the transportation sector and said that the ban on certain jeepney routes and public transport options should have been rolled back earlier.
“Public transportation complements important but strictly face-to-face sectors such as manufacturing, because if workers cannot go to their workplaces, no output can be produced for such sectors,” he said.
The Philippines’ economy is currently on a long downturn, which Duterte himself admitted in a previous briefing.
The country posted its worst year-on-year gross domestic product numbers, as the economy shrunk by 9.5 percent due to the pandemic.
It was the worst slump that the Philippines has experienced since shortly after the end of the Second World War. Zac Sarao, INQUIRER.net trainee