ECQ Extended In NCR Plus For One Week

The National Capital Region, Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan and Rizal or NCR Plus will be under enhanced community quarantine for another week or from April 5 to April 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said President Duterte approved the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ recommendation on Saturday, April 3, to extend the ECQ as longer lockdown is needed to prevent COVID-19 transmission from worsening.

New infections reached 12,576 on Saturday even as NCR Plus has been placed under ECQ beginning March 29. The ECQ was supposed to be until April 4 only. Officials said it would take time to see the effects of the lockdown on the number COVID-19 cases.

Because of the ECQ from Holy Monday to Easter Sunday, Filipinos in NCR Plus areas had to spend the Holy Week at home for the second year due to the pandemic as mass gatherings, including religious events were prohibited.

Roque said local government units must intensify and submit daily monitoring of COVID-19 cases during the ECQ extension.

He added the national government would boost healthcare capacity and open 110 beds at the Quezon Institute for mild and severe COVID-19 cases.

The IATF also directed Cabinet secretaries tasked to monitor specific areas  to ensure that proper government support as well as the strict implementation of health protocols are followed to the letter by the LGUs.

Roque said the IATF pushed for improved implementation of the PDITR strategy or prevention, detection, isolation, treatment and reintegration efforts of the government to beat COVID-19.

“After a week, once we established the PIDTR (mechanism)…we can go back to MECQ (modified ECQ),” he said, stressing that this is only possible after careful review of data. 

Roque said the government's enforcement of the PIDTR strategy has been "reformed" this time to address the rising number of cases worsened by the prevalence of more contagious variants of the virus.

“Health care utilization, case numbers and the PDITR gatekeeping indicators would serve as the parameters to be assessed for the succeeding weeks risk classification,” he added.

The President has directed the Department of the Interior and Local Government to ensure the LGUs will provide the necessary data to be assessed by April 11.

Roque added that the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Trade and Industry have been directed to provide the data on the workplaces and establishments. The Task Group on Management of Returning Overseas Filipinos (TG MROF) shall provide the data on returning overseas Filipinos.

In addition to the minimum health and safety protocols such as wearing of face masks and face shields, and social distancing, the IATF has ordered the intensified house-to-house visitation to look for those with symptoms and to subject them to reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction or RT-PCR testing and isolation.

The government is also working double time to ready about 160 beds for moderate to mild cases in another facility.

The Palace official also appealed to every one to get vaccinated if they are already qualified and the COVID-19 shots are available in their respective communities..

The government has rolled out the vaccination program for last month, prioritizing the healthcare workers, who have been crying for help as hospitals in the country get overrun and overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases.

Read more: NCR, Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan, Rizal Back To ECQ From March 29 To April 4; Here’s How It Will Work

The government has also placed some areas under tighter quarantine classifications to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Speaking during his public address on Monday, March 29, Duterte said Santiago City in Isabela would be under MECQ or semi-lockdown for the entire month of April. Quirino province will also be under the same quarantine classification from April 1 to 15.

The entire Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, and Batangas in Luzon; Tacloban City for the Visayas; and Iligan City, Davao City, and Lanao del Sur in Mindanao will be under general community quarantine (GCQ) next month. The rest of the country will be placed under the most lenient modified GCQ for the month of April.

OCTA backs ECQ extension for at least one week

Experts have recommended the extension of ECQ in NCR Plus for at least one week to further reduce the transmission of COVID-19.

In a virtual press briefing on Saturday, the OCTA Research Group backed the position of the Department of Health (DOH) to extend the lockdown in Metro Manila, Cavite, Rizal, Laguna and Bulacan at least until April 11.

While the one-week ECQ was effective in reducing the reproduction number of the virus, OCTA stressed it was not enough to reverse the surge experienced over the past weeks.

“The implemented ECQ for March 29 to April 4, while effective, will not reduce the reproduction number to less than one. Our projections show that the reproduction number will still be greater than 1 by April 4,” it said.

“This means that the cases will continue to increase if the lockdown is lifted. The numbers may show a significant improvement within the week for the reason that some testing centers will be closed during the Holy Week,” it added.

The reproduction number indicates the number of persons that a positive individual can infect. In Metro Manila, it already went down to 1.64 from greater than 2.0 in the preceding week.

OCTA warned that hospitals and healthcare workers will continue to experience undue strain if the lockdown is eased prematurely.

“Hospital occupancy is still high and although the DOH has made ways to expand hospital bed capacity, the continued increase in new COVID-19 cases will lead to hospital beds becoming filled up in the NCR Plus,” it added.

Even with a two-week ECQ, the group projected that hospital occupancy in Metro Manila will continue to rise until it reaches peak numbers in mid-April.

“After this point, hospital occupancy will stabilize and remain at critical levels above 70 percent for the remainder of the month,” it added.

OCTA fellow Ranjit Rye said that the government must also be prepared to consider an additional third week of ECQ if the reproduction number does not drop dramatically in the next seven days.

He urged the government to establish an exit strategy from the ECQ that will sustain the anticipated drop in the reproduction number, recommending that the ECQ be followed by a modified ECQ before returning to general community quarantine.

“Again, the move from one quarantine level to another needs to be driven by real time behavior in the reproduction number,” he said. “We caution the government that a premature relaxation of the lockdown when the virus is not under control will lead to another surge.”

OCTA also recommended transporting nurses and other healthcare workers from low-risk regions in the country to Metro Manila to assist their colleagues who are struggling with the ongoing surge in the capital.

It also urged the government to accelerate the efforts to build isolation and quarantine facilities, as well as in the vaccination efforts of health care workers.

Hotspots outside NCR Plus

In its monitoring report released on Friday, April 2, OCTA also noted increasing number of new cases in areas outside the so-called NCR Plus, particularly Isabela, Batangas and Pampanga.

Citing data from the DOH, the group said Isabela recorded an average of 243 new cases per day from March 25 to April 1, up 64 percent from the preceding week.

Batangas recorded an average of 225 daily new cases, up 38 percent, while Pampanga had 174 new cases, up 23 percent.

While Benguet did not show an increase, OCTA noted that its hospital bed occupancy is still at a critical level of 90 percent.

Cebu, which has experienced a surge earlier this year, is still on a downward trend,  OCTA said.

In Metro Manila, the group noted that the average number of tests per day decreased by 12 percent to only 25,880, pushing the positivity rate or the number of people who test positive out of the total tests conducted.

“The problem is that with a high positivity rate of 23 percent in the NCR, there is a need to further scale up PCR testing to be able to keep up with the surge in new COVID-19 cases,” it stated.

Read more: DOH Proposes ECQ Extension In NCR Plus; Palace Wants It To Be ‘Absolute Last Resort’