Octa: Data suggest NCR ready for alert level 1

Health care personnel who has just received her booster shot against COVID-19 in Sto. Niño Elementary School, Marikina City walks towards the observation area. Health workers in the city were given the Pfizer brand vaccine today. INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

MANILA, Philippines — The key pandemic indicators point to a brighter Christmas for Metro Manila and the rest of the country, but people need to follow the basic health protocols for this to actually happen.

The independent analytics group OCTA Research said it was optimistic about the situation in December, saying a repeat of previous surges was unlikely even if the loosening of restrictions causes an uptick in cases.

Vigilance needed

OCTA fellow Guido David said the seven-day average for the country could go down to less than 1,000 cases by the end of the month.

He noted that the current national average was 1,600 cases, or 27-percent lower than the previous week’s, while the reproduction number for the whole country was at a low 0.37. This refers to the number of people a sick person can infect.

Based on the data, he said, it was possible that the National Capital Region (NCR) could be placed under alert level 1, the least restrictive quarantine category.

However, OCTA research fellow Ranjit Rye warned that complacency was the enemy along with the coronavirus and urged the public not to disregard health protocols.

“The worst thing that we can do as a country right now is to underestimate the virus and overestimate our achievements and become complacent. We need to fight it over the next few months, especially during this Christmas break,” Rye said at the Laging Handa briefing on Thursday.

He urged people not to hold large gatherings during the holiday season, to protect their own bubbles by staying with their families and to always wear face masks.

Rye said OCTA believed that things would be “more predictable and calculable” over the next couple of weeks and expected the downtrend to be sustained in Metro Manila.

Quarantine easing

This assumes that people would continue to follow minimum public health standards, there would be no new highly contagious variant in the country and the vaccination program would proceed in other parts of the country, he said.

Rye added that COVID-19 testing and contact tracing as well as isolation programs should continue to be implemented.

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion is also optimistic that his appeal to require a shorter quarantine period for vaccinated Filipinos arriving from abroad would be answered.

“I have a good feeling that the facility-based quarantine stay for the fully vaccinated travelers will be reduced,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

Concepcion said he expected that arriving international passengers might spend just two nights at a facility-based quarantine once the government allowed them to take the RT-PCR test on the morning of the third day, get a negative result and then sent home.

“This will be such a substantial reduction from spending the usual five days in quarantine even if you are fully vaccinated,” he said.

“We have been begging the national government to allow testing before departure, testing upon arrival and shortening the facility-based quarantine. We proposed that there be tests 72 hours before departure, and another test once they arrive, just to be sure that we do not compromise the integrity of our borders. We even pushed for home-based testing for those arriving from abroad,” he said.

Concepcion added that there were already countries opening their borders to the world and easing their restrictions by accepting only a proof of vaccination or a negative test result.

He said these included the United Kingdom, United States and Turkey, adding that countries like Spain and Greece forgo tests and quarantines if the visitor is fully vaccinated.

Vaccination mandate

Given the increased vaccination pace, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said a law compelling people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 might no longer be necessary “as more and more people are voluntarily getting themselves vaccinated, as vaccine supply becomes more available and the hesitancy rate has substantially gone down.” While the government could invoke police power for the welfare of the people in general, the justice secretary said there was the other issue of whether the measure was unreasonable or oppressive.

Asked what holds more weight for him, Guevarra explained that the objective was to reach herd immunity at the soonest possible time.

“If this objective could be achieved by means other than compulsion, I would go for those other means. This is my personal view on the issue,” he said.

Guevarra previously expressed opposition against forcing people to get vaccinated due to existing laws. —With reports from Roy Stephen C. Canivel and Tina G. Santos