As more Filipinos get their shots, how long should sick workers remain isolated?

MANILA, Philippines — When Jefferson Rivera, a sales coordinator at a hotel in Manila, got sick with Covid-19, he was not paid during his two-week isolation.

The most that his company, which was heavily battered by the pandemic, provided him was a free three-day accommodation at the hotel where he spent the rest of his quarantine period after being discharged from an isolation facility in Mandaluyong City. He returned to work after a month fully recovered.

“I dipped into my savings to support my family’s needs during that time,” Rivera, 31, said in an online interview. “Until now, our company’s no-work-no-pay policy still stands.”

But that was in March, and Rivera and millions of workers have already received their complete Covid-19 jabs as more doses arrived in the second half of the year. That said, some businesses believe it might be time to cut the 14-day mandatory isolation period, especially for vaccinated employees who would test positive for the virus.

“For me, I think the safest and shortest quarantine should be the one. What a pity for the public. The 14-day quarantine is too long,” Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr., president of Employers Confederation of the Philippines, said in a phone interview.

“Many of them are ‘no work, no pay.’ If the company is large, that’s when they pay employees who are quarantining,” Ortiz-Luis added.

On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cut the number of days that asymptomatic Covid-19 patients should remain isolated to five days, from 10. The move was welcomed by businesses stateside, which have been grappling with staffing woes amid the onslaught of highly-contagious Omicron variant.

In the Philippines, such policy changes should emanate from the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, or IATF, which so far only relaxed quarantine rules for vaccinated international travelers — although these guidelines have been updated recently due to fears over the Omicron variant. Officials at the IATF and Department of Health did not respond to Philstar.com’s requests for comment.

But some groups in the US are worried that the shortened isolation period might force employees who are not yet fully recovered to come to work sick as the lingering pandemic exhausts workers’ paid sick leaves. At home, Ortiz-Luis said ECOP has been constantly reminding its members to follow existing quarantine rules. Economic officials, meanwhile, are counting on health experts to make such recommendations.

“For those vaccinated workers who tested positive, they must complete the 14-day isolation. Will leave it to the health experts,” Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said in a Viber message. “If they say it is safe to lower to, (for) example, 10 days if they test negative in RT PCR on day 10, then I will support it.”

For Benjamin Co, an infectious disease expert, “science has evolved” and isolation periods may now be shortened, regardless of threats from both Omicron and Delta variants, as global vaccination rate picks up. As of December 28, government data showed 48.6 million people in the Philippines have been fully-vaccinated, while 1.6 million booster doses have been administered.

But Co explained it would be hard to assess whether the Philippines can follow countries like the US in reducing isolation period — even for vaccinated Filipinos — because the two countries administered different brands of vaccines with varying efficacies. Apart from Western brands, the Philippines’ vaccine inventory also includes jabs from Sinovac, Sinopharm and Sputnik V, which were found to be weaker against the heavily-mutated Omicron variant, Bloomberg reported.

At the same time, any moves to relax quarantine rules must be matched with ramped-up testing, something that, Co said, the Philippines lacks “considering that testing is out of pocket and patients who do not have symptoms or have only mild symptoms, who have been vaccinated and were exposed to Covid-19, may not be getting tested.”

“We (Philippines) may need to study these recommendations because the vaccines we have in our program are not similar to theirs (US),” he said.

“Of course, recommendations will and can change as we know more about the virus, the variants and the treatments available in the future,” he added. — with Ian Nicolas Cigaral