What’s next?

It is good to know that President Duterte met with a wider panel of experts last Monday. He needs help as he decides whether to lift the enhanced community quarantine by month’s end or extend it. It is not an easy decision to make.

Some view it as choosing between saving lives or saving the economy. It is more complicated than that. While continuing the lockdown will slow down infection in our population, it will also kill a lot of businesses and livelihoods that could result in a social breakdown.

It is a given that we will continue to be vulnerable to infection by the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 beyond April 30. The virus will remain an ever-present threat in the next two years or so.

The lockdown we endured was not supposed to eradicate the virus, but to slow its infection of our population. We needed to do that so our hospitals will not be deluged with more patients than they can handle. We also needed time to scale up our testing.

But the lockdown is such a drastic and expensive move. We actually closed the economy down. Jobs were lost and those who are paid by the day have nowhere to turn to.

Sure… the government allocated some P200 billion to help the poor survive in the meantime, but the execution of the plan left out many who need help.

Obviously, the lockdown must end or be modified soon. Doctors and other health scientists say it is the only viable option in our toolbox until a vaccine comes around. But a continued lockdown is so distressing to everybody that some other way must be devised.

Government is considering a phase-by-phase lifting of the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine. The World Health Organization (WHO) warned against abruptly lifting lockdowns. Crafting just the right strategy is keeping our officials busy.

There are discussions on which industries and sectors would be allowed to resume operations, whether the quarantine should still cover the entire island of Luzon, or only selected areas.

For example, DOTr sought and got approval to restart work on fixing the rails used by MRT3. Other major infra projects should also be allowed to resume.

At the very least, DPWH should be allowed to resume its rehabilitation (or reblocking) of EDSA and C5 to take advantage of low traffic volume. Priority infra projects like the Stage3 SLEX-NLEX connector project of San Miguel should be allowed to resume work.

There was a media report of many construction workers stranded in MetroManila during the lockdown, unable to return to their homes in the provinces. They have problems surviving the no-work situation. Not all construction companies can afford to sustain them in the meantime.

Indeed, given their sordid living conditions in many construction areas, we may have a situation similar to Singapore where the resurgence of the virus happened in crowded barracks where migrant workers live. If work resumes, contractors can be held responsible for their well-being.

Limited public transport should be allowed in a modified community quarantine. This will allow workers from vital industries like food processing to easily get to work. Even as some essential industries like food manufacturers are claiming continued operations, the high utilization capacity cannot be sustained unless workers can easily get to work.

We have to accept many reasonable fixes to the quarantine rules because we will not have a cure or a vaccine soon. Experts talk of a vaccine being at least 18 months away.

In other words, we have to learn to live with the virus by working around it. This makes it important for doctors and other experts (healthcare, logistics, supply chains of essential goods and services, economics) to agree on a balanced program.

There are basics to bear in mind. The first is to know how badly the virus has infected our population and where are the hot spots. This is why mass testing is important.

Government claims they are now doing mass testing. But they are silent on how they are doing it.

Ideally, we should test a random sample of the population. We may not have enough test kits to do that now so maybe they are doing a more targeted testing. That’s not so bad.

Doing targeted rapid testing in Valenzuela that went beyond the guidelines of DOH (to limit the tests to those with symptoms), revealed a number of infected people who showed no symptoms.

It happened in Boston too. They were surprised that of the 397 people tested in a homeless shelter, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms.

We just don’t know how many asymptomatic people there are out there who are contagious. Unless we do, it will be difficult to lift lockdown. Honestly, we don’t know what must be done to contain the virus unless we know how badly it is entrenched and where.

The proper use of rapid tests will enable companies and communities to screen people who can return to work versus those who must remain under quarantine or go for confirmatory testing. This will allow healthy people to resume work with the confidence they are working with similarly healthy people.

Of course, the use of face masks and other safety protocols must be practiced by all to avoid catching and spreading the virus.

Then comes isolating. We have finally built a good number of isolation facilities to confine those suspected until they test negative. This prevents infection of their families and communities. Then do contact tracing.

Then we do testing, isolating and contact tracing all over again to find out how the virus is progressing and where. Unless we know, how can we properly respond?

As Bill Luz of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation puts it, “we need to transition from lockdown to livelihood. We have to balance this delicate equation so we don’t exacerbate this already-difficult situation.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco