Sulong Pasay business leaders urged the national government to ramp up vaccination and testing, preferably for free, to encourage people to be inoculated and tested.

At the same time, they decried suggestions to discriminate against the unvaccinated for constitutional, medical, and practical reasons, saying this runs counter to the objective of reopening the economy.

The business leaders reiterate the ill effects of hard lockdowns which complicate pandemic-related problems, and said "COVID-19 is a pharmaceutical problem and cannot be solved by a militaristic solution like a lockdown.”

The leaders also warned against complacency especially among vaccinated people, citing cases when they may even be carriers even as they are asymptomatic.

Sulong Pasay lead convenor Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis Jr., president of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) and the Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (PHILEXPORT), noted that allowing only vaccinated people to go out will not make a significant dent in the country's thrust to re-open the economy and hire back as many people as possible.

“With the same overhead but with lesser number of customers, entrepreneurs, particularly the micro and small, will rather not open their shops again,” Ortiz-Luis Jr., said, citing the cases of the sari-sari stores and small eateries whose customers may include drivers, sidewalk vendors, and passersby. 

“Discriminating against the unvaccinated is not only unfair, illogical, and hard to implement, but also expensive for our entrepreneurs who may even have to hire a person just to check the vaccination cards and manage another queue just for this group. The same will happen in transport hubs if we distinguish among passengers.”

Ortiz-Luis Jr. called for the beefing up the capacity of hospitals by adding more beds and equipment which should not cost more than the budget alloted for contact tracing.

He likewise reiterated the call to roll out more safety- and health-compliant mass transportation to ferry the people to their workplaces. 

"Otherwise, the workers will be in crowded areas scrambling to get their rides and creating super spreader situations," he added.

Another Sulong Pasay convenor, PhilExport Chairman George T. Barcelon, echoed Ortiz-Luis' statement, adding that mass inoculation should just be one of the interventions.

“After having taken draconian lockdowns and a variety of quarantine protocols to no effect, the government is now open to other measures to address the spread of the virus. Mass inoculation should not be the single criteria due to limited supply of vaccines that has delayed population protection,” Barcelon said.

Barcelon noted that the Delta variant, as reported by epidemiology experts, dictates at least 70 percent to 80 percent vaccination coverage.

“In the meantime, all these measures have taken a severe toll on our economy and social life. Worse, due to the pandemic paralysis of the IATF/DOH, the future of our youth is also at stake. It is then important that businesses, educational institutions, families and every member of our society should be given the chance to be involved in checking and controlling the spread of infection by testing,” he added.

Barcelon said that these can all be done at the barangay level and in educational institutions. “By accepting that COVID-19 will be around for some time and learning to smartly cope with it will gradually lead to a new normal and vibrant society,” he added.