Descent to Alert Level 1 possible by end-February –presidential adviser

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose “Joey” Concepcion III on Monday said that the current restrictions could be eased further to an Alert Level 1 by the end of March, citing improvements in the country’s COVID-19 cases.

During the Laging Handa virtual briefing, Concepcion welcomed the descent to Alert Level 2 starting Tuesday, with businesses allowed to increase their capacity and generate more revenue.

“Alert Level 2 is good news at [and] hopefully, we can move to Alert Level 1 by the end of February. And, eventually by March, ang tingin ko dito (I think) eventually, we can remove all these alert levels and just come up with a basic minimum health standard protocol moving forward,” he said.

“We are seeing this Alert Level 2 is even possible towards the end of February, March,” he added.

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) over the weekend announced the easing of restrictions down to Alert level 2 from February 1 to 15.

Concepcion on Monday cited the downtrend in the cases being reported involving the Omicron variant, which he said had less impact on hospitals than the earlier variants.

“’Yung Omicron pabagsak na rin (is seeing a downtrend in the) level of infection, maski mataas (even if it was high) in the other weeks. The hospitals were never close to being threatened or hitting capacity,” he explained.

The Philippines on Sunday reported 16,953 additional cases of COVID-19 infections, bringing the country’s active cases to 202,864. The total caseload stood at 3,545,680 which included 3.288 million recoveries and 53,891 deaths.

Should the restrictions be eased even further, Concepcion said the economy could grow by 6% in the first quarter of 2022, following the surprise 7.7% recorded in the fourth quarter.

“Now in this coming quarter, the coming quarter, siyempre dapat tuloy tuloy yan. Hindi puwedeng ‘yung last quarter lang of last year ang maganda,” he said.

“Dapat itong first quarter of this year should have a good start so hopefully we can come close to 6%. Hopefully, fingers crossed, or even better. Pero depende ‘yan on how we are able to open up,” he added.

(Now in this coming quarter, of course, growth needs to be continuous. It should not be that only the last quarter of 2022 was pleasant. The first quarter of this year should have a good start, so hopefully, we can come close to 6%. Hopefully, fingers crossed, or even better, but that would depend on how we are able to open up.)

— DVM, GMA News