(BusinessWorld) HEALTH authorities urged local governments at the weekend to enforce targeted lockdowns instead of region-wide border closures to save the economy while trying to contain a more contagious Delta coronavirus variant.

“It’s very important for local government units to implement strict lockdowns in cities or provinces as necessary,” said Anna Lisa T. Ong-Lim, chief of the Infection and Tropical Disease Division of the Philippine General Hospital and a member of the Health department’s technical advisory group.

“Given the economic impact of imposing region-wide lockdowns, the response strategies are anchored on imposing localized or granular lockdowns,” she told a televised news briefing attended by President Rodrigo R. Duterte.

Ms. Ong-Lim also urged local governments to boost their disease surveillance and healthcare capacity amid the local transmission of the Delta variant from India.

“We need to work on the premise that every case that’s now detected is Delta so that we can act accordingly,” she said. “The strategy to manage a possible surge is to ensure that the healthcare system is actually ready regardless of the community quarantine classification.”

An overwhelmed healthcare system would make it difficult for cities to fight the virus, Edsel T. Salvana, director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the National Institutes of Health-University of the Philippines Manila, told the same briefing.

“We know Delta is more transmissible, it’s potentially deadlier and can spread faster,” he said. “But it is beatable with our minimum health standards, face shields, face masks, physical distancing and of course, we have to vaccinate everyone.”

DoH reported 5,479 coronavirus infections on Sunday, bringing the total to 1.54 million. The death toll rose to 27,224 after 93 more patients died, while recoveries increased by 5,573 to 1.46 million, it said in a bulletin.

There were 54,262 active cases, 93.4% of which were mild, 1.2% were asymptomatic, 2.3% were severe, 1.63% were moderate and 1.4% were critical.

The agency said five duplicates had been removed from the tally, three of which were tagged as recoveries. Fifty recoveries were reclassified as deaths. Three laboratories failed to submit data on July 23.

Mr. Duterte last week approved a recommendation by an inter-agency task force to tighten quarantines in the National Capital Region (NCR) and other virus-hit areas until end-July. He also banned travelers from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Fifty-five more people got infected with the Delta coronavirus variant — said to be 60% more contagious than the Alpha variant from the United Kingdom — bringing the total to 119, the Department of Health (DoH) said on Sunday.

Thirty-seven were local patients, 17 were returning migrant Filipinos and one was still being verified, it said.

Fourteen of the 37 were in Southern Luzon, eight in Northern Mindanao, six each in the capital region and Central Luzon, two in the Davao Region and one in Ilocos