MANILA, Philippines — Some of the country’s largest business groups have expressed support for a strategy to get at least 40-50 percent of adults in the National Capital Region and its neighboring provinces vaccinated against COVID-19 and allow the country’s battered economy to fully reopen by Christmas.
According to data presented recently by the OCTA Research Group to business groups led by Go Negosyo and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, inoculating at least 40 percent of NCR Plus 8 key provinces will be enough to achieve “population protection” and prevent damaging surges in cases of COVID and resulting lockdowns.
This is because new COVID cases per day will be brought down to just 1,000 for the entire country and 140 new cases in NCR as the average daily attack rate will be reduced to less than one per 100,000.
Presidential adviser for entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion again pushed for the pace of vaccination to speed up as the vaccines start arriving this month to immediately open up more sectors of the economy and save more jobs and the micro, small and medium enterprises that are bearing the brunt of mobility restrictions.
Achieving herd immunity, which means vaccinating at least 70 percent of the population, is still the fighting target this year.
But given time and resource constraints, the more viable alternative is to at least vaccinate 40-50 percent of the population in NCR Plus 8 provinces in Calabarzon and Central Luzon that together account for more than half of the country’s gross domestic product.
“Those vaccinated then stand to enjoy greater mobility and access. Seniors will be allowed to go out and people will get to travel freely without the need for testing. All this can be triggered if we are able to achieve population protection,” Concepcion said.
“Then we can have an ‘old normal’ Christmas this year,” he added.
As the OCTA Research experts noted, in the absence of full herd immunity by yearend, the containment of COVID-19 is the next best goal.
This will free the Philippines from the difficult but necessary quarantine protocols that have caused widespread damage to the economy and businesses and led to millions of jobs lost.
Achieving population protection will require about 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in NCR Plus 8 provinces.
Fr. Nicanor Austriaco of the University of Santo Tomas noted the experience in Israel, where the pandemic has ended.
Austriaco said that once the vaccination level there reached 40-50 percent, there was a significant drop in the number of cases.
The same strategy can be applied here with containment, which will bring down the daily average attack rate to less than one per 100,000.
Austriaco said the highest number of vaccinations so far in a day here was 220,000 doses.
Concepcion expressed optimism that the rollout of forthcoming vaccines will be smooth. “By working together, the government and the private sector can put the country back on the path to recovery and then to a rebound,” he said.
PCCI president emeritus George Barcelon shared Concepcion’s view.
“There need not be a tradeoff between loss of lives and loss of livelihood. We need to have a balance,” Barcelon said. “We submit that this is the only way to go forward.”
The private sector has demonstrated its commitment to the country’s vaccination program by purchasing vaccines for their employees and other shareholders, helping local government units acquire their own supply, while at the same time donating a portion of the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine doses to government.
Concepcion also urged the government to consider allowing greater mobility to those who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, including seniors to dine out and for inoculated Filipinos to freely travel without having to secure RT-PCR tests or undergo quarantine.
Eric Teng, head of the Restaurant Owners Association of the Philippines, said allowing vaccinated seniors to dine in restaurants will greatly help their finances that took a severe beating because of the restrictions.