Metro Manila will stay under the second strictest lockdown level, a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), for another week or until Sept. 15 as the government postponed the region's supposed shift to a looser lockdown.
Malacañang said on Tuesday the National Capital Region shall remain under MECQ or until the pilot general community quarantine (GCQ) with alert level system is implemented, whichever comes first.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the government is ironing out guidelines for the shift to granular lockdowns in Metro Manila – which were supposed to start today, Sept. 8 — to support the economy despite the continuing pandemic.
This developed as the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the country’s biggest business organization, is pushing for the full reopening of the economy, arguing that any form of lockdown was disruptive to businesses.
In a statement, PCCI acting president Edgardo Lacson said the group wished for the full opening of the economy even if the herd immunity threshold was not met as yet due to the moving and elusive target of 50 percent to 100 percent inoculation of the population.
“Many health experts claim it is impossible to achieve herd immunity as the virus keeps mutating and the vaccine is always behind the curve,” Lacson said.
“The COVID-19 virus and its variants will be here forever, but it can be contained by simply observing prescribed health protocols of masking, handwashing, and social distancing,” he added.
Roque, however, said the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) deferred the pilot of the GCQ with Alert Levels System – keeping indoor and al-fresco dine-in services and personal care services, including beauty salons, beauty parlors, and nail spas, shut for now.
Religious services performed through online video recording and transmission shall be allowed, Roque said. Also, immediate family members are allowed to attend necrological services, wakes, inurnment, and funerals, as long as the deceased died of non-COVID-19 causes.
However, they need to show satisfactory proof of their relationship with the deceased and have to comply with the minimum public health standards.
Roque said: “If the guidelines will not be released today (Tuesday), the effectivity will have to be the day after tomorrow, to be fair, because the people do not know what will happen, especially which industries can reopen.”
Previously, Malacanang announced that Metro Manila will be under GCQ from Sept. 8 to 30, the second lowest quarantine level, even as the country continued to log new record highs in daily COVID-19 tallies.
Roque said Metro Manila’s 16 cities and lone town might have various alert levels in the same period.
Region-wide lockdowns have proved to be costly for the economy, which is now expected to grow less than previously thought after the capital region was placed under the strictest ECQ level last month, which were later eased.
"The truth of the matter is the ECQ as we practice, it may not be enough, we need to come up with a new strategy," Roque said on Monday.
The Philippines exited recession in the second quarter of 2021 after five consecutive quarters of GDP contraction.
But a renewed surge in COVID-19 cases forced authorities to impose stricter curbs in August, leading to a cut in this year's economic growth outlook to 4.0 to 5.0 percent, from 6.0 to 7.0 percent previously.
Daily cases in the past 30 days alone accounted for more than a fifth of the country's total infections of over 2.1 million, while deaths have exceeded 34,000.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization supports the government's decision to shift to a looser quarantine status and to implement granular lockdowns in localities, with some recommendations to make the new policy efficient.
"If we are now considering moving from a very stringent quarantine to a more relaxed quarantine with very granular lockdowns, which is something that the WHO advocates and supports, the critically important element is that those granular lockdowns, those actions need to be influenced by very accurate, very up-to-date data," WHO country representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe told CNN Philippines' The Source on Tuesday.
Abeyasinghe noted that timely and accurate data on the COVID-19 cases, their severity, and the clustering of infections would help in determining the success of the granular or "pocket area" lockdowns that will be implemented in most parts of Metro Manila.
The Philippine College of Physicians earlier raised concern on the alleged discrepancies in the Department of Health's data, particularly on available ICU beds in the country.
But the Department of Health said these things would really happen when reporting COVID-19 cases on a national and local scale.
Abeyasinghe also recommended increasing the current average 70,000 COVID-19 tests per day.
He also said the tests must be conducted in localities to detect clusters and other sources of transmission, since testing only the close contacts of infected persons "does not give the full benefit of the investment in testing."
In related developments, the UP Pandemic Response team said granular lockdowns must be accompanied with immediate detection of active cases, effective contact tracing and intensified vaccination.
“Granular lockdown will be successful if well-organized, immediate detection is there…If we have testing, contact tracing, and an expansion of vaccination in areas with high cases, maybe these all together can help in decreasing COVID-10 cases,” Prof. Jomar Rabajante told ABS-CBN's TeleRadyo.
“Lockdown in itself is just to slow down the transmission, it shouldn't be the only strategy,” he added.
In Metro Manila, the DOH will determine a city's alert level based on three factors: hospital care utilization rate, level of cases or infection, and the type of variant present in the area, said MMDA chairman Benhur Abalos.
"I would like to clarify it’s not actually GCQ, it’s GCQ with heightened restrictions and primarily this concept was done because three sectors are always affected in GCQ," he told ANC's Headstart.
These sectors are crowded areas such as churches, conferences; businesses involved in close personal contact such as spas, barbershops; and closed spaces like restaurants and gyms, Abalos said.
"It’s a more flexible, friendlier policy on their part so they could be easily opened with this kind of system," he said.
PCCI's Lacson stressed the importance of massive and continuing vaccination, tracing, and testing, and fast-tracking the development of alternative and cheap medicines against COVID-19.
“We must remove our overblown fear of this virus and the even greater fear of another lockdown,” Lacson argued.
Any form of a lockdown, whether region-wide or granular, is disruptive to business, the PCCI chief emphasized.
“It is a tacit admission by authorities that they will henceforth abandon the intermittent and harmful regional lockdown protocol. Yet, it must be recognized by authorities that a lockdown, whether region-wide or granular, remains disruptive and a disincentive to business operations,” he said.
