Metro Manila, 4 provinces under ECQ for at least one more week

MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday ordered Metro Manila and four nearby provinces to remain under the strictest lockdown for at least another week to contain the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the president approved a recommendation from the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to extend Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in the National Capital Region (NCR) and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal.

If the situation in these areas improves after a week, the quarantine regulation could be lowered to modified enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), Roque said.

“But first we will see the results of the extended ECQ,” he said.

The independent research group OCTA also recommended a one-week extension of the ECQ and even another if the increase continued.

Last week’s ECQ “is not enough,” OCTA Research fellow Ranjit Rye told an online news conference Saturday. “We are definitely not out of the woods and we need an extra week,” he said.

Guido David, another researcher, said that if the coronavirus reproduction rate “does not drop dramatically in the next seven days,” the administration should consider a third week of ECQ.

The coronavirus has spread to many healthcare workers, including 117 out of 180 from the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) who had been tested, forcing the hospital to temporarily close its outpatient department and suspend elective surgeries.

The Department of Health (DOH) has commissioned several hotels in Metro Manila to provide isolation rooms for at least 40 of the coronavirus-positive POC health workers. Ten others were taken to a quarantine facility in Fairview, Quezon City.

Roque said that during the extended ECQ local governments were supposed to intensify their prevention, detection, isolation, tracing and reintegration strategies.

These include visiting homes to look for people with COVID-19 symptoms, which are generally flu-like, and then testing and isolating those who test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, he said.

This will require “daily monitoring” by local governments and interested officials from the National Working Group Against COVID 19, Roque added.

Local governments must also improve enforcement of quarantine measures, especially compliance with minimum public health standards, he said.

The reproduction rate referred to by OCTA Research is the rate at which the coronavirus spreads; the higher the number, the faster the spread.

He had projected it to be 1.5 on Easter Sunday, and it would drop further to 1.2 if the ECQ were extended for another week. It was 1.96 in the week before the ECQ was implemented on March 29.

Rye said it would be “extremely catastrophic” to relax quarantine restrictions now, especially with most of the hospitals in Metro Manila at critical occupancy levels.

“OCTA’s conviction has always been that if we are able to manage and mitigate broadcasts, that is the only time we can really jump-start the economy,” he said.

P. Nicanor Austriaco, another OCTA fellow who is a molecular biologist, said that because patients recovering from the virus generally take seven days before being confirmed positive and 27 days to recover, they expect occupancy rates to hospital stay above 70 percent during the rest of April.

Roque said that to increase capacity to care for patients, a 110-bed facility would open this week at the Quezon Institute in Quezon City for moderate and severe cases.

Another 160 beds would be available next month for such cases as well, he added.

He called on people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine to get vaccinated.

A recent Pulse Asia survey showed that only 16 percent of Filipinos were willing to get vaccinated.

Roque said that health care utilization, case numbers and local government monitoring reports would be the data that would be evaluated to decide the next quarantine status for Metro Manila and the four provinces in the coming weeks.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government would ensure that local governments provide reliable data from the communities, while the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Commerce and Industry would be responsible for obtaining data on the status of workplaces and business establishments.

The Working Group on Managing Filipinos Returning Abroad is responsible for reporting on Filipinos returning abroad, Roque said.

More than 12 new cases

The announcement of the continuation of the ECQ in Metro Manila and the four provinces came as the DOH recorded 12,576 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the country’s total case count to 784,043.

The number is the second highest case count in a single day, behind only 15,310 new cases recorded on Good Friday, which included 3,709 late-counted cases that would be reported on March 31.

Adjusted for late cases, the Black Saturday new case count is the highest ever recorded since the pandemic began. The previous highest daily count of 10,016 was reported on March 29.

The DOH said 599 patients have recovered, bringing the total number of survivors to 604,905. However, 103 died, bringing the death toll to 13,423.

Deaths and recoveries left 165,715 active cases, the highest recorded since the pandemic began.

Of the active cases, 96.5 percent are mild, 2.2 percent asymptomatic, 0.5 percent severe, 0.5 percent critical, and 0.30 percent moderate.

The DOH said the positivity rate on Saturday reached 24.2. percent, which means that almost one in four people tested tested positive for the coronavirus.

He said that after validation, 30 duplicate cases had been removed from the total case count and 48 marked as recoveries were recorded as deaths.

The situation of nurses

According to DOH, 60 percent of all beds in intensive care units nationwide are in use, but their utilization rate in the national capital, the worst-affected region, is much higher, at 80 percent. hundred.

He said 73 percent of isolation beds in Metro Manila were occupied, higher than the national average of 47 percent.

Meanwhile, 43 percent of mechanical fans are used nationwide and 63 percent in the capital.

According to Sean Velchez, senior nurse and president of the POC union, healthcare workers themselves were having a difficult time finding facilities for their sick colleagues.

“We can only imagine how difficult it is for ordinary families to go through the same thing. We can only imagine their mental anguish, ”Velchez said, adding that they hope the situation at POC will provoke further testing.

John Andrew Michael Bengzon, the hospital’s officer in charge, said in a statement Saturday that its emergency room would remain open to treat those who need immediate orthopedic care.

The hospital sees 350 to 450 outpatients a day, Bengzon said in a statement.

He also asked the public for personal protective equipment, especially masks, as staff needed to wear double masks.

The POC, which has more than 1,300 employees, has screened 90 employees per week and this doubled before vaccination scheduled for next week.Apart from the high number of cases among healthcare workers, Velchez noted that this time , the virus had infected employees in different departments, from specialists to employees.

—With a report by Nikka G. Valenzuela

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