(UPDATED) If found effective in controlling transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the new alert level system being piloted in Metro Manila will be enforced in the rest of the country by the end of September 2021, Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Friday, September 17, 2021.
The new system imposes granular lockdowns — by household, street, barangay, or condominium floor or building — instead of shutting down whole towns, cities, provinces or regions. It is being piloted in Metro Manila (National Capital Region) from September 16 to 30.
After the pilot implementation, Vergeire said the DOH will study the feasibility of rolling out this system to the rest of the country to replace the community quarantine system.
“Kapag nakakita tayo ng positibong resulta dito sa ginagawang (If we see positive results from the) pilot implementation, we may be able to roll it out to the rest of the country towards the end of September. Pero syempre, IATF pa rin po ang magde-desisyon n’yan (But of course, the IATF will still make the decision),” Vergeire said in a virtual press conference Friday.
The IATF is the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, which sets the policies for the government’s Covid-19 pandemic response.
Vergeire pointed out that granular lockdowns have been among the DOH and IATF’s recommendations since last year.
“If you may recall, granular lockdowns were among our gatekeeping indicators,” she said.
However, this has not been properly implemented among the local government units (LGUs).
Vergeire said the new alert level system was crafted after the IATF’s data analytics team found that four of five (80 percent) new cases in the recent two weeks in the NCR came from only 11 percent to 30 percent of the barangays in the region.
“Nakita natin maliit lang yang porsyento na naaapektuhan pero sinasara natin ang kabuuan ng isang area (We saw that only a small percentage is affected but the entire area is placed on lockdown). So isa po yan sa nagtulak sa amin na i-propose na maybe granular lockdowns would be more effective,” she said.
The system is being piloted in Metro Manila to enable the IATF to gather evidence of its effectiveness in curbing transmission of Sars-CoV-2 and its highly infectious variants of concern, especially Delta.
Based on DOH and Fassster projections, Covid-19 cases in the NCR alone may reach 16,000 to 43,000 a day by September 30 because of the rapid transmission of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2). The daily Covid-19 case count nationwide has been averaging more than 20,000 a day for almost a week now as the Delta variant has already been detected in all 17 regions.
Another factor that the DOH considered in trying out the alert level system is the increased mobility in Metro Manila despite the implementation of an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
“Mas mataas pa kaysa doon sa mobility natin in the previous ECQ. Kaya po tayo nagsabi na mukhang hindi na magiging effective (ang quarantine) and we need to re-strategize,” Vergeire said.
She said they will be assessing the situation every week.
She declined to identify the metrics being used to determine the alert level classification of an area, saying these are still under study and could still change. Revealing these metrics now might cause confusion when some of these are changed later.
Under the community quarantine system, the only metric used to de-escalate an area’s quarantine classification is the healthcare utilization rate (HCUR). Escalation of quarantine levels, on the other hand, is based on HCUR, two-week growth rate, average daily attack rate and several other factors. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)