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Companies in several provinces continue to face uncertainty about whether they will be allowed to operate in full or partial capacity before Saturday. due to pending community quarantine classification in their areas.
At an online press conference on Thursday, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan are appealing to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to place it under “modified community quarantine” “(MECQ)) instead of being under general community quarantine (GCQ).
Local officials in those provinces appealed amid concerns that the sudden relaxation of quarantine measures could increase the number of new cases of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) within their jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, the province of Laguna requests to be reclassified from having MECQ to a GCQ.
Roque said that appeals from said local government units (LGU) for the reclassification of their community quarantines are currently being addressed by the IATF Selection and Validation Committee for provinces, highly urbanized cities (HUC) and independent component cities (ICC). .
He said the IATF will decide on such appeals as soon as possible.
“If this couldn’t be done before May 16, I’m sure shortly after May 16,” Roque said.
List change
Pursuant to Resolution No. 35 of the Interinstitutional Working Group for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), only the National Capital Region (NCR); Laguna province; and the City of Cebu will be placed under MECQ from May 16, 2020 until May 31, 2020 for having a high risk of Covid-19 infections.
Areas with moderate risk were supposed to be placed under GCQ, while low risk areas would have to be removed from their community quarantine.
However, the IATF chose to reconsider the low risk classification upon appeal by the affected LGUs, through the issuance of its Resolution No. 35-A.
On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said low-risk areas should be classified as low modified GCQ (MGCQ).
However, since the MGCQ guidelines are still being finalized, Roque said the IATF chose to temporarily place low-risk areas under GCQ,
Business impact
The community quarantine classification is expected to greatly affect business operations in an area, as it determines who will be exempt from domestic quarantine.
For MECQ, people are generally confined under domestic quarantine, while for GCQ, everyone in the 21-59 age group could leave their homes.
The ranking also determines what public transportation is available in an area, as well as the number of employees, who will be able to work on site for specific industries.
The IATF prohibits all public transportation and limits on-site employees to 50 percent in areas under MECQ. But if an area is under GCQ, public transportation will be allowed, but it will be subject to social distancing measures, and companies will be allowed to have 100 percent of their employees to work on site.
Despite these various regulations from different MECQ and GCQ, Roque assured that workers from authorized industries could pass through these areas without problems.
“Well, we have guidelines for interzone movements. Those who are allowed to work in different quarantine areas would, of course, be allowed to work in an industry that is allowed to operate. All they have to do is present their job ID and their ID where they live [when passing checkpoints]Roque said.
He stressed that such a policy is limited only to work-related travel.
