Government Identifies 2 New Indicators for Community Quarantine Classification

 The Philippine government has identified two new indicators for its community quarantine classification, an epidemiologist with the Inter-Agency Task Force's (IATF) sub-technical working group on data analytics said.

Dr. John Wong said the government would be using the Average Daily Attack Rate (ADAR) and the Two-Week Growth Rate (2WGR) to identify which level of community quarantine an area may be classified.

The ADAR is the number of cases over a two-week period divided by the population of the local government unit (LGU). The higher the ADAR, the higher risk of infection.

The 2WGR, meanwhile, measures the growth of the epidemic in an area or how quickly the number of cases is changing over a period of time. The second indicator compares the cases in the past two weeks from the number of cases three to four weeks ago.

If the growth rate is positive, Wong said this would mean that the epidemic is growing. A negative computation, on the other hand, reflects the shrinkage of the epidemic.

Explaining the process of Community Quarantine classification, Wong said the government would be looking at 'gate-keeping criteria' or the public health capacity of a community first, which includes its testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine capacities.

And once LGUs establish or prove their capacity is sufficient, their ADAR and 2WGR would be measured next.

"Once they meet again the cut-offs of these criteria then we allow them through the gate to a lower level of community quarantine," he said in a virtual presser in Malacanang. "The goal of every LGU is to try to lower their community quarantine status and reach the new normal. (The) de-escalation depends on several criteria, so we call this the gatekeeping criteria."