Marcos prods govt to stop lockdowns, time to live with the virus

CEBU CITY – Senator Imee Marcos prodded the government to stop lockdowns as a default measure in controlling the COVI-19 pandemic and instead improve testing capacity to detect cases of infection early and isolate them immediately.

“Living with the virus should be our goal than achieving a zero-Covid target. Lockdowns are reactive, not proactive,” Marcos explained.

Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs, said that the 2022 budget must seriously fund the country’s testing capacity to prevent the blanket disruption in livelihood, income generation, and overall economic growth.

The senator credited the government for lowering the pandemic’s reproduction rate since the August lockdown but added that unless testing capacity is improved to guard the gains that have been made, the country will be stuck in a constant rehash of alert levels and quarantine protocols.

The Covid-19 reproduction rate in the country, which reached a high of 2.04 in March 2020, has gone down this year from a high of 1.32 percent last March to 0.52 percent this week.