The government will provide assistance to those unable to work during NCR Plus ECQ

MANILA, Philippines – The government will impose the strictest lockdown for a week starting Monday in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna, which have seen a sharp increase in the number of daily COVID-19 cases.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque announced the drastic move on Saturday when the Department of Health (DOH) reported that the number of active cases had risen to more than 118,000 with new infections topping 9,000 for the second day in a row.

The Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) from March 29 to April 4 for the national capital and the four adjacent provinces will be accompanied by a curfew from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Under ECQ, people must stay at home, and movement of residents is limited only to access to essential goods and services and to work in licensed offices and establishments.

The government will distribute aid to those who cannot work and details are being finalized, Roque said.

“Because the president understands that there will be no work while we are under ECQ, help will be given to our compatriots,” he added.

President Rodrigo Duterte approved the recommendation of the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to place these areas under ECQ, which was based on data on cases and health care utilization, Roque said.

“We want to take drastic measures because the increase in cases is drastic due to the new variants. The drastic threat justifies a drastic response, ”Roque said at a televised press conference.

It was the first time that important parts of the country were placed under ECQ a year after the president imposed the strictest lockdown on the country in response to the pandemic.

This means that a significant part of the economy would be closed in these areas and only essential business would be allowed.

Roque said the government hopes the one-week ECQ will help reduce the number of infections by more than 25 percent.

“I think the expectation is higher than 25 percent [reduction],” he said.

Roque previously said that the strict two-week general community quarantine that was supposed to end on April 4 was intended to reduce cases by 25 percent.

To curb the increase in cases, the government will implement additional protocols and increase testing, and will carry out parallel implementation and strengthening of vaccination efforts in places with a high number of cases, Roque said.

It will implement minimum health standards, distribute personal protective equipment, modernize workplaces and public spaces to ensure adequate ventilation, he said.

Officials will visit homes and actively search for, test, track and isolate suspected COVID-19 patients.

He said 95 percent of close contacts must be traced and isolated within 24 hours.

Roque said the government will also purchase at least 500,000 antigen test kits to ensure that large numbers of people are tested, he said.

The blockade was stricter than the modified ECQ proposed by the OCTA research group, but shorter than the two-week period it had recommended.

Higher figures

The number of daily infections has recently surpassed the highest figures reached during the height of the pandemic in August last year. Health officials attribute this in part to the spread of the most infectious variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and a lack of follow-up on health measures, such as the use of masks, hand washing and physical distancing.

DOH reported 9,595 new cases on Saturday, a day after registering 9,838 cases, bringing the total number of cases to 712,442.

He said 481 had recovered, bringing the number of survivors to 581,161. The 10 who died brought the death toll to 13,159.

Deaths and recoveries brought the number of active cases to 118,112, with 95.1 percent being mild, 32 percent asymptomatic, 0.7 percent critical, 0.7 severe, and 0.39 percent moderate.

The DOH COVID-19 tracker showed that Metro Manila and the four provinces accounted for the highest number of cases.

Metro Manila’s 63,266 active cases accounted for 53.56 percent of the country’s total and 5,204 new infections were 54.23 percent of total new cases.

Rizal had 535 new cases, Bulacan 500, Cavite 453, and Laguna 315.

OCTA Research, an independent group of scholars mostly from the University of the Philippines, proposed the modified ECQ at the Laging Handa briefing on Saturdays, saying that current restrictions under general community quarantine would take too long to reduce the number of cases in the country. and overloading the health system.

Tighter restrictions are needed

OCTA’s Butch Ong said the COVID-19 breeding number only dropped from 2.04 to 1.94 due to localized restrictions.

Because of this, OCTA maintains its projection that daily cases would reach 11,000 by the end of the month, although it expects the country to exceed this, Ong said.

Tighter restrictions are needed, he said.

“If we are going to keep the localized lockdown and if the change in breeding number is only .01, with the change decreasing, we could see an improvement in about ten weeks, and that’s too much for our healthcare workers, because of the system health, ”said Ong.

The intensive care unit bed occupancy is 70 percent, which is the critical level, he noted.

‘We need a break’

OCTA researcher Ranjit Rye told reporters that the “health care utilization rate” needed to be lowered, referring to rising hospital occupancy rates.

“We need time-out and we need it now. We are doing this to save lives and livelihoods, ”Rye said.

Albay’s representative Joey Salceda, chairman of the House forms and media panel, said he supported the closures “if they really make a dent in the number of cases.”

“Blockades that paralyze livelihoods should come with the assurance that those who will suffer greatly from them will be fed and protected by the government. So we have to make this work. I welcome the recommendation to present funding sources for specific grants during the closing, ”he said.

In addition to completing vaccination for front-line physicians, he said healthcare workers who need to go to work during the ECQ should receive some kind of hazard pay soon and “not be subject to bureaucratic processes months later.”

House Minority Leader and Abang Lingkod Representative Joseph Stephen Paduano said he was against the shutdown.

“We did it before. We do not repeat it and we regret the lost opportunities due to the blockade. Filipinos do not need to choose between dying from a viral infection or from poverty and hunger! A balanced policy between health and the economy is necessary ”, he said.

‘Inefficient’

Bayan Muna’s representative, Carlos Isagani Zarate, said that placing Greater Metro Manila under ECQ without massive and free testing, aggressive contact tracing, isolation and effective and timely treatment, and an accelerated vaccination deployment “would be repeating the same militaristic, inefficient and highly ineffective shutdowns by the Duterte administration. “

He said the government’s move was a “tacit admission by the administration that it failed; that ruined the Covid pandemic crisis in a big way. “

“It is also proof of his dire failure to listen to health experts from the beginning,” Zarate said in a statement.

—With reports from Patricia Denise M. Chiu and Julie M. Aurelio

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