Delta variant (part 2)

The Philippines is doing better than its neighbors when it comes to handling the COVID-19 Delta variant, so says Health Secretary Francisco Duque III at President Duterte’s weekly address on Monday.

Duque compared our situation to other Asian countries, and as the numbers show, our neighbors are indeed having it worse Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, for example.

As a tycoon observed, other countries led by Indonesia, Malaysia, and even Japan are all recording high numbers, whereas the Philippines is doing fairly better.

“So maybe the IATF, DOH, OCTA are doing something right?” he says.

What our authorities need to do now is to keep it this way if not totally eliminate the Delta variant which is already in the country — 35 cases as of this writing.

As I said in Monday’s column, there is a very small window to contain the variant and our authorities must seize this immediately.

We need to do serious containment measures. I agree with stepped-up quarantine measures as OCTA recommended, but I also note that any new lockdown must be implemented with the immediate distribution of economic aid so citizens do not have to go out.

By now, we should already be doing hard contact-tracing on the detected cases of the variant and localized lockdowns.

OCTA said the implementation of bubbles, especially in the National Capital Region Plus composed of Metro Manila, Cavite, Rizal, Laguna, Batangas, and Bulacan would help.

True enough, a spread of Delta in the NCR would be too dangerous and would again put our health system at risk.

Our authorities must also note the similarities between Indonesia and the Philippines in terms of vaccination.

So far, less than six percent have been fully vaccinated in Indonesia, similar to our number of 3.9 percent of the population.

And the majority of those vaccinated received Sinovac doses, just like here in the country.

More than 85 percent of vaccines given in Indonesia are Chinese-made and there have been reports of some doctors and health workers dying despite being fully vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine, according to a BBC report.

I hope we do not see this happening here.

In Indonesia, the Delta variant was detected in 94 percent of the tests sequenced the past two weeks, according to the monitoring site, Our World In Data (OWID), as reported by BBC.

Our Southeast Asian neighbor is near a catastrophe with rising concerns over the availability of hospital beds and oxygen supply, experts have also said.

In Thailand, cases and deaths are also surging and these have been attributed in part to the Delta variant.

The department’s director-general, Dr. Supakit Sirilak, said the Delta variant was now present in 71 of the 77 provinces in the country, the BBC reported.

The BBC report added: ”62.6 percent of the total 3,300 cases sequenced were the Delta variant, according to official figures. Thailand government has now announced a lockdown in the capital Bangkok and other high risk regions.”

Thailand, too, had only fully vaccinated around five percent of its population by the end of June.

In Bangladesh, which shares a border with India, the variant was detected in 92 percent of the tests sequenced and, as of July 13, only less than three percent of the population have been vaccinated.

These numbers show that we need to accelerate our vaccine roll-out, and hopefully, with the more effective mRNA vaccines.

While we are, indeed, in a better position in terms of containing the Delta variant, we should note the situation is precarious and fragile, and can change overnight.

I hope our health authorities do not become complacent and continue to step up contact tracing and containment measures.

Individually, we should not let our guard down and should continue to practice health protocols.

Let us take OCTA’s warning seriously and not wait for the numbers to surge. We should continue to be extra careful in our homes and in our workplace.

Indeed, we may be faring better compared to other countries in terms of the Delta variant situation, but there’s no time to relax. We should use this to our advantage — to again step up quarantine measures and learn from our mistakes before, when COVID-19 first landed on our shores.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com