Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion suggested that the Philippines should take a cue from how it manages typhoon warnings regarding its planned exit from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Concepcion made the call Thursday, Feb. 3 as he once again urged the government to steps in whisking the country out of a pandemic mindset.
In a statement, Concepcion said it is possible for the country to learn to live with COVID-19 by adopting a framework that has already worked in the past.
"I believe we can rationalize the Alert Level System and take a cue from how our country manages typhoon warnings," he said.
"We don’t have Public Storm Signal Warnings every day because we’ve learned that a light shower or thunderstorm is not enough to shut down schools or tell people to stay home," he noted.
Likewise, the Philippines has never dropped storm signal warning systems as typhoons are a seasonal occurrence.
"There is no surefire way to prevent a typhoon from entering the country, just as there is no guarantee we can keep away future variants of COVID," he said.
However, the Go Negosyo founder clarified that alert levels should not be scrapped altogether. This was after Malacañang rejected calls to do away with the existing Alert Levels System for COVID-19 response or ALS.
"When the threat is there, then we call the alert levels... What we need is to align the basic protocols that do or do not warrant the placing of alert levels," he said.
"What we are doing is preparing a plan. Without a plan how do you move on? If we anticipate every variant that comes along, we will just get stuck in the same place," he added.
Instead, Concepcion advocated for the requiring of people to present vaccination cards and even booster cards where booster roll outs are high, or in areas where there is a higher risk of transmission.
Mandatory health protocols such as the proper wearing of face masks and social distancing, he said, remain a given.
"I think that after two years of the pandemic, Filipinos already know how they can keep themselves safe even when in an indoor setting, in crowds, and in situations where they have to remove their masks," he said.
The government's pandemic task force said that the government is already preparing its pandemic exit plan, to be put in place possibly as cases in the country decline to less than 1,000 a day.
Independent research group OCTA Research, meanwhile, is projecting lowered cases by mid-February, with the emergence of a deadlier variant highly unlikely.
Concepcion bared that the private sector will carry out a town hall meeting to come up with inputs to the country’s pandemic exit plan.
"What I am keeping an eye on in the next few weeks are the schools. With more than 40 million of the country’s 109-plus million Filipinos under the age of 19, the reopening of face-to-face classes will spur so much mobility it’s only right that we make sure everything goes smoothly," he said.
The Palace official suggested that the months of April and May should be spent vaccinating schoolchildren in time to try to reopen schools by June. He also suggested allowing only fully vaccinated children from fully vaccinated households or those with no unvaccinated senior citizens in the household to return to face-to-face classes.
"This will not only minimize the risks for the vulnerable, it might encourage the vaccine holdouts to get their shots, and the LGUs (local government units) to also ramp up their vaccinations," he said.
Meanwhile, Concepcion said that there "should be a gradual approach to moving on from the pandemic", noting the importance of ensuring continuity in the country’s pandemic response even with the exit of the Duterte administration.
"Bottom line is, we have to move on," he said.
"The first and second quarters of 2022 must be a period of growth, low alert levels and the strict implementation of health protocols, children ready to safely return to school, and a country that is no longer afflicted by COVID," he added.