​Lockdown watch (4)

PHILIPPINES - In Brief 20 Apr 2021 by Romeo Bernardo

---

Can Metro Manila exit the current lockdown? Three weeks since President Rodrigo Duterte placed the nation’s capital and 4 surrounding regions (“NCR+”) under the strictest enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and more than a week since the transition to its looser form (mECQ), covid19 statistics are improving but the numbers are still far from reassuring. On the one hand, positive signals include the drop in the reproduction rate for Metro Manila to 1 from close to 2 three weeks ago, the decline in new cases in the past 5 days as well as the slide in the positivity rate (based on 7-day averages). On the other hand, the number of daily cases are still relatively high (averaging close to 10k) and the healthcare system is still overburdened by the large number of active cases (averaging over 165k). Moreover, new strains of the coronavirus have been detected in about a quarter of the samples tested[1] with their higher transmissibility raising worries that lifting restrictions would again lead to explosive growth in infections. Meanwhile, government is just starting to ramp up vaccination of priority groups concentrating efforts in the high transmission areas, with a quite low record 67k injections in one day, To date, only 60% of healthcare workers have been inoculated of which, only 20% received their second dose[2]. Moreover, most of the jabs are first doses of the Sinovac vaccine which based on reports from Latin America would not provide the minimum 50% efficacy until two weeks after the second dose[3]. Contributing to the slow rollout is the delayed procurement of vaccines, with no certainty on contracts for future vaccine deliveries except for China’s Sinovac.But can ...