​Covid watch (2)

PHILIPPINES - In Brief 13 Mar 2021 by Romeo Bernardo

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The uptrend in new covid19 cases continued this week with the case count exceeding 4,500 on Friday. New cases rose 46% week-on-week based on 7-day averages with Metro Manila seeing much higher case growth. The overall positivity rate is now over 10% and the reproduction number estimated at 1.2 from below 1 last week. Hospital bed occupancy rates are also rising and is close to 50% in Metro Manila.To stem the tide, the national government, through the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), is now reviewing recent decisions loosening restrictions, although it appears disinclined to impose more sweeping quarantine measures. [1]Rather, selective tightening and stricter monitoring of compliance with existing restrictions can be expected. Already, Metro Manila mayors are set to enforce a 10pm-5am curfew on Monday, March 15. So far, the Philippines has received over 1.1 million of vaccine doses only. Given the supply constraint and need to follow prioritization protocols, distribution has expectedly been slow with less than 115k people inoculated as of March 10. News reports suggest that the government and the private sector are on their way to procuring enough vaccines to inoculate the target 50 million people by the end of the year. According to testing czar Vince Dizon, reaching the target requires government to administer 250k to 300k doses a day once the bulk of the vaccines have been delivered. This is a high bar considering vaccination data in other countries where only a handful of developed countries with population sizes similar to or smaller than the Philippine’s has managed to do more than 200k jabs a day at peak.[2] Neighbor Indonesia wit...