Second wave

For the first time since the start of the enhanced community quarantine, traffic enforcers were back at work in my neck of the woods last Saturday.

That was because there were enough vehicles on the road to call for traffic management. It was still far from the usual pre-pandemic Saturday vehicular traffic; for one, there is still no mass transportation in Metro Manila. But traffic was heavy enough at least around the shopping malls, which partially reopened for the first time in two months.

I just went to a drive-through for fastfood, so I don’t know what it was like inside the malls. No Wi-Fi? Warm air-conditioning? It’s the new normal for malling, and people can live with it.

Judging from the number of vehicles in the parking lots, I guess people must have brought fans to endure the discomfort of air conditioning set at higher temperature.

When I drove out after lunch, the traffic was still relatively light. Returning home before 4 p.m., however, traffic had built up significantly.

A private village whose main road is highly commercialized has also reopened its gates to non-residents. Most of the food establishments have reopened for take-out and deliveries. The salons and spas are closed, but some hole-in-the-wall barber shops are operating ninja style, their entrances just slightly open and letting in only known customers, one at a time.

A few tricycle drivers were also risking arrest and taking people to the mini supermarkets and public markets. Tricycles are still banned in my part of town, but they are now allowed in six Metro Manila cities: Caloocan, Mandaluyong, Marikina, Navotas, Pasig and Valenzuela.

On TV, I saw that such scenes were pretty common. The tricycles carry only one passenger per trip, separated from the driver by a plastic sheet.

In one town, a barber at work in his shop allowed himself to be videotaped for TV. Told that barbershops and salons were still not allowed to operate, the guy said he needed the money, and unless someone would come and order his shop shuttered, he would continue working.

Seeing those livelihood activities resuming around the country, it would become increasingly difficult to sustain restrictions in Metro Manila and the two other areas still under modified enhanced community quarantine – Laguna and Cebu City.

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On “The Chiefs” last week on One News/TV 5, we asked the deputy chief implementer of the national COVID-19 response, Vince Dizon, what the last word was on barbershops.

He said that after lengthy discussions, it was decided that barbershops were still a no-go. The principal concern, he explained, was a possible second wave of infections emanating from barbershops and salons – which is what we’re seeing in other countries notably in Europe.

Another thorny issue is religious gathering. In the livestreamed Radio Veritas anticipated mass on TV last Saturday, my mother listened to Rev. Fr. Jerome Secillano appealing to the government for an expansion of the five-person limit for public mass attendance in churches.

The Manila Cathedral, for example, could accommodate 50 people easily, with ample space for observing physical distancing, Secillano pointed out.

He urged the faithful to observe not just physical hygiene but also “spiritual hygiene” as he called for “sacred space in (the) digital platform.”

Some local government units such as Parañaque have allowed churches to reopen. Looking at the images from some of the churches yesterday, we could see that physical distancing was being observed.

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There are fears of a second wave, especially because we have to admit that the past two months of quarantine did not sufficiently ramp up capabilities for mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine and isolation.

Thanks to private sector initiatives spearheaded by Go Negosyo’s Joey Concepcion and energetic local executives such as Marikina’s Marcelino Teodoro, mass testing capabilities continue to expand. But we’re just starting to hire more people and to work on an app for widespread contact tracing.

Typhoons could eat into facilities for isolation and quarantine, as we have seen in Eastern Samar and the other areas hit by Typhoon Ambo last week.

With the rush to return to making a living, there is a high risk of precautionary measures against infection being tossed out the window.

The mindset of “it can’t happen to me” (or “I can’t infect others”) is evident even among public officials and those tasked to enforce quarantine measures. We’ve seen this cavalier attitude in the case of police Maj. Gen. Debold Sinas, who still has his command in Metro Manila, unlike the lesser mortal, Capt. Peter Paul Sison, who was sacked as police chief of Sto. Tomas town in Pangasinan for his mañanita for Mayor Timoteo Villar III. Much earlier than this, we saw the same attitude in “excited” dad Sen. Koko Pimentel. 

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The possibility of a second wave is pretty high, as we are seeing in other countries. And we don’t have their capability for prevention.

Wuhan City in China’s Hubei province, for example, is aiming to conduct mass testing of its 11 million inhabitants in 10 days, after new COVID clusters emerged.

The testing is underway in the city where the coronavirus first emerged, as prominent Chinese pulmonologist Dr. Zhong Nanshan warned his country over the weekend to prepare for a second wave of infections.

Nanshan had sounded the COVID alarm in China and warned of human-to-human transmission on Jan. 18, five days before Wuhan was locked down. The doctor, who also worked on the SARS epidemic, called for transparency from local Chinese officials on the COVID contagion.

George Barcelon, president emeritus of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, had told The Chiefs shortly before we stopped taping in the studio with the imposition of the quarantine that he was worried about a second COVID wave in China.

Like other countries, the Philippines sources many supplies from China. Barcelon noted that workers in the typical Chinese factory live in cramped dormitories, where there is a high probability of contagion once the lockdown is lifted.

It must be noted that the same cramped conditions prevail in the quarters of Chinese nationals working in Philippine offshore gaming operations. POGOs can now resume operations in general community quarantine areas after being classified as business process outsourcing firms (to the surprise of the BPO industry).

So let’s brace ourselves… we could swing overnight from eased quarantine to a hard lockdown.