(UPDATED) President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday, December 26, 2020, said there is a possibility that the country will again be placed under lockdown if the new Sars-CoV-2 variant is detected.
In a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF) in Malacañang Saturday, Duterte said the decision will depend on the severity of infections with the new virus variant.
In the meantime, he directed the Department of Health and the Department of Science and Technology to create another task force that will monitor developments on the new variant.
"Actually iyong lockdown is a possibility. I said we are making some projections. But if the severity in numbers would demand that we take corrective measures immediately then we’ll just have to go back to lockdown," Duterte said.
"Kasi 'pag marami na [ang cases with the new variant] and we do not have the antidote how to kill those variants, we have a problem there," he added.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who is also the chairman of the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF), agreed with the President but said the IATF should set and agree on a “threshold” which would be the basis of lockdown implementation.
"I think the IATF should put a threshold kung ilan araw-araw lumalabas na ano, then we might enforce again tighter lockdown. Kung bababa lang siya ng two or three below maybe... mag-usap tayo para sa threshold, para automatic lockdown tayo," said Lorenzana.
However, both Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año and Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases president Marissa Alejandria said there is no need for another lockdown.
"Right now, there is no necessity to call for a lockdown. But we have to close the border if there is a real situation that will occur later on," said Año.
Alejandria said the virus was expected to mutate. She said, however, that it is still transmitted mainly through respiratory droplets.
She said imposing a lockdown or travel restriction “will not be sustainable in the long run.”
World Health Organization (WHO) representative in the Philippines Socorro Escalante also recommended against a lockdown.
She instead proposed a more thorough risk assessment and the implementation of risk mitigation measures.
"This risk mitigation, Mr. President, would include looking at of what is the current stage of transmission of this specific variant in the country of origin of our passengers. For example po, if we are looking for example for (sic) Australia, Japan and Singapore, although mayroon na pong na — the cases that have been detected and reported through the International Health Regulations, by this basis, we would not encourage like lockdowns or restrictions of travel because the numbers are low and these are also the countries which have very stringent public health interventions," she told the President in the same meeting.
NTF chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr., for his part, said the country should take proactive measures in preventing the virus from entering the country.
The new variant of Sars-CoV-2, which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), was first detected in the United Kingdom. The Philippines has temporarily prohibited inbound flights from the UK and mandated all passengers arriving from countries with cases of the new variant to undergo 14-day quarantine regardless of RT-PCR test results. (SunStar Philippines)