Making sense of ‘new normal’ back-to-work guidelines

Businesses allowed to reopen in these “new normal” times are slowly inching their way through the whole exercise, especially in areas where there are inadequate or insufficient guidelines from government bodies.

Many of those starting up, for example, are asked to limit their activities to 50 percent capacity, which could be interpreted in many ways, like through production output or input, or number of staff or operating hours.

It can get very confusing, and leads into different interpretations by those charged with implementing or enforcing the rules. The situation paves the way for abuse, petty corruption, and unnecessary bureaucracy. In resolving gray areas, very probably the guiding consideration should be the need to impose and maintain social distancing among work staff.

Some local governments, like Makati’s, have issued guidelines for businesses that want to resume operations with the usual bureaucratic procedures, like filing for a notice of re-opening with the city’s Business Permits and Licensing Office.

For most businesses resuming operations, the health and safety guidelines imposed by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) and supplemented by what the local government or appropriate national agency may impose, would be the overarching guidelines.

Everything else within the gray areas is fair game. In resolving gray areas, very probably the guiding consideration would be the need to impose and maintain social distancing among work staff.

Fine-tuning policies and rules encompassing the “new normal” of business operations is the challenge faced both by the government and private sectors. In the meantime, in this “experimentation” stage, let’s hope that economy starts moving with less risk of recurrence of new coronavirus infections.

Until when

Until a cure or a vaccine is found, the coronavirus will continue to be a threat to the old life we knew before the “new normal” came. This is something we as social beings will have to accept. Just until when this enforced lifestyle will end is the big question.

In the meantime, businesses related to travel and tourism, entertainment, dining, and leisure, and retailing are going to take the biggest hits.

Not only are airlines hobbled by restrictions to keep middle row seats empty in compliance with social distancing rules, but most people would rather refrain from travelling by air or even by any transportation that would mean getting cooped up with strangers in a confined space, even with the mandatory use of masks and sanitizers, and compliance to social distancing.

For workers and employees who do not have their own four-wheel vehicles to travel, the new norm would likely see the increase in the use of motorcycles and bicycles, especially if their own employers are not able to provide shuttles.

Many jobs will likely disappear until the economy can start to grind again at its pre-coronavirus rhythm. Weaker consumer demand, the 50-percent capacity rule, and the higher cost of manufactured goods all conspire for businesses to cut employment numbers.

For restaurant and mall owners, confining rules on dining out and socializing will dampen patronage, and ultimately the bottom line. Many service stations have been shuttered, and some of these may not open up until travel bans are fully lifted.

Contact tracing instead of prolonged lockdowns

Like many countries caught flat-footed by this pandemic, government response has not always been swift or effective enough. Just as with reopening procedures, a lot of fine-tuning is also needed in response to general guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO).

One thing we’re definitely not getting right is taking a more serious stance on contact tracing, which has been an integral part of the plan of more successful countries in mitigating the virus spread.

We need to be able to immediately and quickly know the people who had been in contact with an infected individual and those that these people may have passed on the virus in order to carry out isolation measures to contain any possible infection.

WHO, as well as successful countries like South Korea, China, and Vietnam, can provide the training templates to prepare contact tracers to do a good job. Our government just has to decide to do it and allot the funds to maintain it.

Investing in tracers and the technology to do tracing are more cost-effective than imposing wide lockdowns that paralyze the movement of people who are not affected. We’ve gone into two months of quarantine, and are still surprised at where the deadly virus crops up.

Let this be a lesson well learned. Our government must appropriate the necessary funds to prepare our health system for the current as well as any future, pandemic.

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