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GREAT DECISION. President Duterte meets with members of the COVID-19 working group and health experts from the private sector before making a final decision on whether or not to extend the blockade of Luzon. Picture of Malacañang
MANILA, Philippines – There was an almost complete consensus among health policy experts consulted by President Rodrigo Duterte that the current closure of the entire Luzon will be lifted on April 30, and only some parts of the region will remain in quarantine. .
“There was almost a consensus that an ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine) does not have to be implemented throughout Luzon,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a virtual press conference on Tuesday, April 21.
“Their recommendation is to continue ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine) where there is an outbreak of COVID-19: NCR, Cebu and Davao,” added Roque.
He later added Calabarzon and “portions of Bulacan” as areas that experts believed should remain under closure after April 30.
Luzon, home to 57 million Filipinos, has been on lockdown since March 17. The blocking period is supposed to last until April 30, although the government prefers to use the term “ECQ”.
Roque said that presidential advisor for entrepreneurship Joey Concepción also supports the lifting of the closure of the entire Luzon on April 30, but the quarantine measures would be implemented in localities with a high number of COVID-19 cases.
“The private sector suggestion was to find out which barangays have high infection rates and implement ECQs there,” said Duterte’s spokesman.
Some experts who attended the meeting had specific dates in mind for a continuous quarantine period. Health reform advocate Anthony Leachon, for example, supports a modified quarantine from May 1 to 15 in Metro Manila.
Why continue quarantining for selected areas? The list of areas that health experts believed should remain under some form of quarantine was based on the number of COVID-19 cases there and the likelihood of another outbreak.
Mahar Lagmay, executive director of the Institute of Resilience at the University of the Philippines, said that the implementation of the ECQ, whether modified or as it stands, will depend on how close a province is to its “outbreak threshold.”
Metro Manila, which represents more than half of the total number of coronavirus cases in the country, is at this threshold, Lagmay said.
Cases in the region are now at 3,785. Calabarzon comes next with 818 cases, followed by Central Luzon with 285 cases. Cebu province, including independent cities, has 186 cases. The Davao region, meanwhile, has 97 cases.
Duterte’s questions. The president’s main agenda for the meeting was to discover the consequences of fully relaxing or lifting the current closure measures in Luzon.
According to Roque, the president asked: “What will happen if you lift the ECQ to certain types of people? What good will raising or relaxing the ECQ do for certain sectors of society? How many people will die if the ECQ is lifted, modified, or retained? “
Other questions the spokesperson cited were: “Is there a possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 if the ECQ is relaxed or raised? If people are allowed to leave their homes, will the disease increase again or is it really a round of COVID-19 ? “
A positive aspect that Duterte observed was the greater number of recoveries compared to deaths. At the time of writing, 613 patients recovered from the virus while 428 perished.
While the number of recorded recoveries has exceeded the number of deaths in the country in the past week, the number of new cases during that time was often more than 200 per day.
In addition to expert recommendations and input from government agencies, Duterte will also consider the advice of the World Health Organization that any relaxation of quarantine measures should be done in a phased or phased manner. – Rappler.com
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