Vaccinating NCR helps Iloilo – OCTA fellow

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

A fellow of Quezon City-based research firm OCTA Research Group highlighted Wednesday that vaccinating residents of the National Capital Region (NCR) will also help Iloilo, among other places in the country, to recover from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

In a phone interview, OCTA Fellow Professor Ranjit Rye told Daily Guardian that they agreed with Mayor Jerry Treñas that Iloilo City should be part of the areas prioritized in delivering large volumes of the COVID-19 vaccine, owing to the current surge in cases.

Treñas earlier hit the research firm for suggesting back in May 2021 that 90 percent of vaccine allocation should be prioritized for the NCR.

President Rodrigo Duterte in the same month directed the prioritization of vaccine deliveries to the “NCR Plus 8” areas—NCR, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao, Bulacan, Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Pampanga, and Rizal.

Rye clarified that their prior position on prioritizing areas with higher density was anchored on the fact that there were fewer volumes of vaccines expected to be delivered back then.

“OCTA helped shape the vaccine deployment program, but then again part of OCTA’s goal was premise on the fact that we didn’t have a supply of vaccines when we first discussed this. Right now, there will be a significant amount of vaccines coming in towards the end of the year and possibly there will be enough for the whole country. What OCTA is saying is that, we have to prioritize, we have to systematize, for the whole country, so we can achieve milestones,” Rye told Daily Guardian.

As to the mayor’s tirades, Rye stated that OCTA will not issue a response, saying that it “doesn’t want to add to the controversy”.

He also explained that current COVID-19 surges in the country were not directly attributable to vaccine supplies as while vaccines do prevent surges, there are currently not enough supplies to do so.

Rye said that while vaccine supplies are insufficient, strict border controls and observance of minimum public health standards including proper handwashing, wearing of face masks, and maintaining physical distance are still key to mitigating COVID surges in a particular area.

“The prevention of a surge is really the job of vaccines, but we didn’t have it enough last month to cover the whole of Iloilo or anywhere else, so we’re following a prioritization program all over the country where we start with [vaccine priority groups] A1, A2, and A3,” he said.

Rye also emphasized that prioritization of vaccine delivery to “NCR Plus”, or the capital region and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal, was also key to stopping surges in less-dense areas in the country.

This is because COVID transmissions are concentrated mostly in metropolitan areas, with the bulk of these cases or more than 60 percent, in the NCR Plus area.

Based on their latest monitoring report on June 20, Iloilo City ranked third among local government units (LGUs) with the highest growth of COIVD-19 case numbers in the country (outside of NCR).

“Everyone will get vaccinated, it’s just that there are certain areas that have been prioritized first because of the limited vaccines that we have. Why are we doing this? Because when you vaccinate NCR, you’re helping Iloilo also. When you’re vaccinating NCR plus, you’re stopping the spread of virus all over Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. These are the centers where surges and transmissions are large. If you stop hitting these areas, it’s likely you will stop hitting these provinces in many of the islands, including Iloilo,” Rye said.

He added that improvements in more dense areas in the country will trickle down to the cities of Iloilo and Bacolod, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What we want is efficiency for the limited amount of vaccines that we are going to have over the next few months. If we finish vaccinating [people in denser areas], the pandemic will slowly die in the country and that would be to everyone’s advantage, in terms of health, in terms of jumpstarting economic recovery. What will help NCR will also help Iloilo, Bacolod, and the rest of Visayas,” he said.

Rye said Iloilo was always included in their areas of focus when discussing COVID-19 mitigation and vaccine prioritization.

“We were the first since last year to put focus on Cebu, Iloilo, and Bacolod. We’re very mindful of what’s happening in the provinces, because there is a tendency to focus in Metro Manila. When OCTA came, we were very clear that we would want to do monitoring in the province and do a hotspot analysis, a sort of early warning for LGUs when their numbers are heating up,” he said.