Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Tuesday said the proposed so-called “bubbles” for people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 should be seriously considered when the majority of Filipinos have completed the vaccination process.
“I understand that the objective behind PA Concepcion's proposal to give vaccinated persons greater mobility and access is to boost the revival of certain sectors of the economy,” Guevarra said in a text message to reporters.
Guevarra made the statement following the suggestion made by Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose Ma. “Joey” Concepcion III, who also proposed imposing restrictions for unvaccinated individuals once local government units achieve a vaccination rate of 70% to 80%.
“The idea is good but may be challenged as violative of the equal protection clause by those who have remained unvaccinated but are nonetheless complying with mandatory health protocols,” the Justice chief said.
“Without prejudging the legal issue, the proper time to push for the proposal is when the vaccines have become readily available to anyone anywhere and the majority of the people have been fully vaccinated,” he added.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Monday that he was in favor of Concepcion’s proposal, although he raised possible legal concerns after consulting Guevarra on the matter.
A total of 13 million Filipinos are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, still far from the government’s target of vaccinating up to 70 million people before the end of the year.
Concepcion said the private sector is hopeful that Metro Manila would soon achieve “micro-herd immunity” that would in turn boost economic activity in the region. (See full story online at manilastandard.net)
During a virtual town hall meeting on Monday, as the country marked its 30 millionth vaccination against COVID-19, Concepcion said the private sector has been working relentlessly with the government to find a solution to end the lockdowns and safety reopen the economy.
He said that one of the solutions to the problem was to create a travel bubble for the vaccinated and unvaccinated where the latter will be allowed to travel from home to the workplace.
“As we have seen in news reports, the greatest number of admittance in these hospitals are coming from the unvaccinated,” Concepcion said.
“We want this not to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated. That is why the mobility of the unvaccinated is being proposed basically from home to the workplace,” he added.
Meanwhile, those who got vaccinated will be allowed more mobility to go to malls, restaurants, salons, and spas, among others.
“For the vaccinated, there is greater mobility being proposed beyond the home to workplace and adding on to different business establishments that will be allowed so that at least we are allowing the vaccinated to create that economic activity,” Concepcion said.
“I felt that this roadmap of really trying to bridge both– helping both basically lives and livelihoods can be well established if wepromote this micro-herd immunity,” he added.
However, the Go Negosyo founder said this will only be possible if the National Capital Region (NCR) will be able to vaccinate at least 50 percent of its population soon– a condition posed by the government’s pandemic task force before considering the travel bubble or micro-herd immunity proposal.
“That is one of the conditions – 50 percent of the population [of] NCR must be fully vaccinated,” he said.
“Hopefully, it can happen sometime – September. But ultimately, our real goal is to try to herd it before the end of the year,” he added.
Concepcion said that with the Delta variant, the country has to hit higher numbers of vaccination to increase the defense of the proposed bubble. “The bubble that we have to create has to be a much stronger bubble.
The greater number of people that will take the vaccine increases the strength of that bubble,” he said.