PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte ordered the study of a plan to tighten border security and other measures that will prevent the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19).

Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, Duterte’s trusted aide, disclosed that the President had called the meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), health experts and economic managers in response to the Department of Health’s (DoH) recent confirmation on the local transmission of the more contagious variant in the country.

Go, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, warned the public against the virus in a statement.

He said if the variant spreads as quickly as it has in the previous months, the President was considering closing the country’s borders.

The government on Friday added Thailand and Malaysia in its travel ban after it has restricted entry of travelers from Indonesia and most parts of South Asia and the Middle East

The country, according to the President, can no longer afford another wave of Covid-19 cases.

The DoH has reported that hospital occupancy rates in the National Capital Region (NCR) are rising once again

More restrictions

In a separate statement on Saturday, the DoH said additional restrictions may have to be imposed if there would be

significant changes in the number of cases in areas with confirmed local transmissions of the Delta variant.

The warning comes after 17 more cases have been detected, 12 of which were locally transmitted. The other variants are Alpha with 11 and Beta with 13 cases.

The 17 new Delta variant cases raise the total number of infections to 64.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergiere said during the regular Laging Handa briefing that while the IATF-EID had recommended putting NCR and surrounding areas under GCQ or general community quarantine with heightened restrictions, this could change if there is an increase in the number of cases or new genome sequencing results.

She said hospitals have been instructed to expand their beds or set up tents and modular hospitals or adopt the “accordion policy” where non-Covid-19 beds can be converted for use by Covid-19 patients.

500,000 Covid-19 jabs a day

On the bright side, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the government has managed to give close to 500,000 jabs in a day, making it the highest number of inoculations in one day in the country.

Galvez, who is also the chief implementer of the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF), said the government administered 472,356 jabs nationwideN

With this development, Galvez said 5,560,029 Filipinos have been fully vaccinated while 10,866,238 doses have been given as the first dose.

With the continuous arrival of vaccine supplies, including the donated one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the NTF said the government would focus on protecting the most vulnerable sectors, particularly senior citizens (A2) and persons with comorbidities (A3).

Testing czar Vivencio Dizon said the government wanted to keep this trend “as we aim for 750,000 daily jabs in the next quarter.”

As of July 23, the Philippines has received a total of 30,985,130 doses of anti-Covid vaccines from different manufacturers.

The bulk of the supplies the country has received to date, consisting of 13.5 million doses, were delivered this July.

Galvez said around 6 million doses were still expected to arrive in the last week of the month.

Vaccine deliveries to the country, he pointed out, have been steadily going up monthly since February when only 600,000 doses were delivered.

All in all, the Philippines has been able to secure a total of 164 million anti-Covid vaccine doses for 2021.

These vaccines were acquired through procurement by the national government, private sector and local government units, while the rest were sourced from the Covax Facility and bilateral donations.

An additional 26 million doses are still being negotiated by the national government with various vaccine makers to ensure that the country would have a stable supply in 2022, as the government prepares to vaccinate its pediatric@sectorN

For his part, Gen. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, chief of the Philippine National Police, ordered local police to make sure children, 5 years old and above, were not out on the streets or in public areas after the government ordered them to stay at home again amid a threat of a surge in Delta variant transmissions.