Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion said he is hoping for the de-escalation of Metro Manila’s status to Alert Level 1 by end of February or by March and the eventual removal of all alert levels.
The National Capital Region (NCR) will be placed under Alert Level 2 starting Feb. 1, which Concepcion welcomed as “good news” during the Jan. 31 Laging Handa briefing.
“[H]opefully, we can move to Alert Level 1 by the end of February, and eventually by March. Ang tingin ko dito, eventually we can remove all these alert levels and just come up with a protocol, basic minimum health standard protocol moving forward,” he said.
Concepcion said various groups from the private sector will meet in the “coming three weeks” to “craft a plan on how each sector can develop their exit plan” from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The idea eventually… is to reach a point wherein there is no more alert levels. We develop a standard protocol and nakikita na rin natin sanay na ang consumer, pagpasok sa isang restaurant alam nila if the safety protocols of the restaurants are there,” he said.
“I think we will eventually get there. I think by March, sometime [during] that period, palagay ko April. I think we will be ready to move out from alert levels,” he said.
However, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said the Alert Level System “will continue to be used and implemented.”
Although a lower alert level will be beneficial to the economy, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Chua is not willing to explore alert level abolishment, saying that it works “by managing the pandemic from the sources of highest risk and allowing the rest to move around safely.”
Meanwhile, Prof. Guido David of OCTA Research stressed that the pandemic exit plan should reflect much lower COVID-19 cases, with the ideal figure of less than 500 a day.
Moreover, Dr. Edsel Salvana, an infectious disease expert, said the decrease in the number of cases does not mean that the country is out of the woods.
As of Jan. 31, the Philippines has 190,818 active COVD-19 cases after 14,546 new cases were reported Monday. – Report from Naomi Tiburcio/AG-rir
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