The government will discuss health packages and incentives for people who are on home quarantine due to COVID-19 this week, Malacañang said Tuesday, as the Philippines logged record coronavirus infections.
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles told a press briefing: “During the meeting this Thursday, that will be one of our topics: first of all, the package, health package that we can offer for those who undergo home isolation. And PhilHealth should be part of this discussion, and of course, the healthcare provider that’s accredited by PhilHealth.”
Nograles, acting spokesman for Malacañang, said the labor department should also clarify regulations for workers who call in sick and need to go on quarantine.
Asked if the government had enough funds for the possible health package, Nograles said the government was working on a new budget right now.
The Philippines logged 33,169 new coronavirus infections on Monday, bringing the overall tally close to 3 million as the Omicron variant takes its toll, with the overpopulated capital Manila and surrounding provinces the worst hit.
The healthcare system is at risk of being overwhelmed, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told ANC news channel, calling on symptomatic people to immediately isolate and get tested.
In related developments, the Department of Health said it would propose to the Inter-Agency Task Force a shortened quarantine period of five days for individuals who will test positive for COVID-19 but are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic.
During a Malacañang briefing, DOH Undersecretary and treatment czar Leopoldo Vega said that amid the threat of the Omicron variant, the department will ask the IATF to expand the shortening of isolation to those who have completed their primary vaccine doses and tested positive for COVID-19 but does not experience any symptoms, just like for the healthcare workers.
The IATF on Friday approved a shortened isolation and quarantine period for fully vaccinated health workers infected with or exposed to COVID-19 to five days.
This was decided after hospitals raised concerns about being short staffed amid rising COVID-19 infections.
Vega backed the IATF resolution, saying that it has basis and has peer-reviewed data coming from the United States and Europe.
He noted that 93 percent of the healthcare workers were already vaccinated and that in a way, they were “protected against the virus, especially the Omicron, for hospitalization and even death.”
He explained that if people were fully vaccinated, the viral load would be “very low” especially if they were asymptomatic and could thus no longer transmit the virus to others by the fifth day.
Vega added: “This is really the reason we prioritized the healthcare workers because they could be easily monitored by the infection and control committee in hospitals.”
The Philippine General Hospital said that almost 400 of its healthcare workers have tested positive for COVID-19, with 86 new cases on Sunday night.
Meanwhile, a doctor said the Department of Health is justified in shortening the quarantine time for COVID-stricken healthcare workers to five days.
“The thing is if they don’t shorten it, the more that the hospitals are gonna lose their healthcare workers,” Dr. Consorcia Lim-Quizon, of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group, said in an interview with ANC’s “Rundown.”
“Because as is, you know, there are hospitals that have to close their other departments because there’s simply no people there to man those departments,” Quizon added.
“So, they are justified in shortening it for healthcare workers because there’s a science behind it, that at least what the international health organizations are telling us—that we can be safe enough to shorten the quarantine period for the healthcare workers at least,” she said.
Studies have shown that the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has a shorter period of infectivity, Quizon said.
“So, the bad news is that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible. However, they also found out that the period of infectivity for this particular variant is shorter. It’s 2-6 days. In some studies. So, you know, that’s why they were justified that there’s science behind shortening the quarantine period,” she said.
“You may argue that ‘Doctor, it’s 6 days, why are you doing 5 days?’ You know, but again, that’s a range. 2-6 or 3-6 days is a range. The true value of the infectivity period may be somewhere in the middle of the 2-6 days range,” she said.
“And so we are, I think we are quite secure that doing 5 days would be safe enough,” she said.
On the other hand, Presidential Adviser for COVID-19 Response Vince Dizon said on Monday that the government is mulling a shorter isolation period for people who get infected by COVID-19.
This comes after several countries reduced their isolation period after the highly transmissible omicron COVID-19 variant spread globally, leading to worker shortages at airlines, schools, and businesses.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for one, said its move to cut in half to five days the isolation period after COVID-19
infection was based on science around transmission of the virus.
Quizon said a shorter isolation period for Filipinos might be possible once more people get vaccinated.
“I will see that happening in the Philippines if our vaccination rate or coverage for our general population would increase. As it stands, I think we have accomplished more than 50 percent, but in the countries that you mentioned, their vaccination rate is what, 60-70 percent,” she said.
“But on the other hand, what is good for us, is that by and large we wear masks. You know if you look at the recommendation of the US CDC, it says 5 days of isolation and quarantine and then they can do another 5 days but wear masks. For us, it is a matter of course that
we wear masks,” she said.
In other developments, Manila’s six public hospitals will only admit severe or critical COVID-19 cases, based on a new directive issued on Monday by Manila Mayor and presidential aspirant Isko Moreno.
The hospitals are Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Hospital, Ospital ng Tondo, Justice Abad Santos Medical Center, Ospital ng Sampaloc, Sta. Ana Hospital, and the New Ospital ng Maynila.
Manila’s policy shift was made amid the rise in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant.
Patients with COVID-19 mild symptoms but have underlying conditions will also be admitted to those hospitals, he added.
Those with very mild symptoms or are asymptomatic were advised to isolate themselves at home if there is available space.
COVID-19 patients with very mild symptoms or are asymptomatic who do not have space for proper isolation will be brought to quarantine
facilities, including the new one at Araullo High School on Taft Avenue corner United Nations Avenue.
