As daily COVID-19 cases are expected to drop this month, Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion urged the government to place the country under the least restrictive Alert Level 1 by March.
"We need to de-escalate our countrymen from crisis mode to recovery mode. This is important if Filipinos are to come out and help rebuild our country by engaging in economic activity like going to shops, dining out, traveling or going back to work," Concepcion said in a statement on Tuesday, Feb. 8.
According to Concepcion, the two-week lockdown in August 2021 succeeded in heading off a surge that would have affected crucial fourth-quarter economic activity.
Following a rise to more than 26,238 in cases in September, Concepcion said infections dropped to triple-digit numbers in December, enabling the country to record a better-than-expected 7.7 GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2021.
"Moving to Alert Level 1 will already have a big effect on how we recover from hereon,” he said, adding that this will give the country an opportunity to see how well it will manage by relying only on maintaining prescribed public health safety protocols.
Under the lower alert level, Concepcion said that all establishments should be allowed to operate but there will still be minimum health protocols to be implemented.
However, Concepcion suggested for the government to define not only the public health safety protocols to be put in place but also the conditions under which alert level systems can be lifted and people can resume some normal activities.
"I think that as long as there are no variants of concern, and we have already achieved a high vaccination rate and hospital utilization rate is low, we can already start to consider lifting alert levels," he said.
Aside from Concepcion, independent research group OCTA Research also believes that an Alert Level 1 status presents an opportunity for the country to sustain the growth it realized in the fourth quarter of 2021.
"Now is the time , because the science is proving that cases are going down,” said OCTA which projects that new infections will drop to 1,000 to 2,000 per day by the end of February.
In addition, Concepcion said the government must immediately define and set the timing for the administering of booster shots, saying that immunity will eventually wane and there are thousands of vaccines nearing their expiry date.
"As we require vaccination cards for entry in high-risk areas, we will eventually require boosters as the greater percentage of the population receive their primary doses," he said.
The Go Negosyo founder likewise called for the opening of face-to-face classes by June, but only to fully vaccinated students to help further their development.
"Parents also need to have a more predictable schedule so they can plan on returning to work or resuming their normal daily activities. For business, schools have a multiplier effect that simply cannot be matched by any other activity I know," Concepcion added.