Over the past several months the
level of liveliness in every city and municipality across the Philippines has
been dictated, after a fashion, by the varying levels of community quarantine
handed down by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases
(IATF-EID) and usually announced as executor by the President. From the severe
limitations of Enhanced Community Quarantine to the near-“New Normal” state of
Modified General Community Quarantine, urban areas in the country await each
new periodic update on CQ status, in the hope that they could reopen more
businesses to restart the economy even in the midst of COVID-19.
So it was that on the evening of
Wednesday, July 15 according to Inquirer.net,
President Rodrigo Duterte laid down the new community quarantine levels for the
Philippines effective on Thursday, July 16 to the end of the month in July 31.
The major flashpoint for these CQ announcements has been Cebu City, which had
the displeasure of moving back up to Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) after
being relaxed to General Community Quarantine (GCQ) for a brief time. Now, it
has de-escalated one level to Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) for
the rest of July, the last Philippine locale with “enhanced” levels of
quarantine still remaining.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry
Roque further elaborated that residents of Cebu City are still discouraged from
going out except for essential necessity grocery shopping, or if belonging to
any industry that has been cleared to resume operations. “Public gatherings”
are also no-go, with only a maximum five people in a location (with social
distancing) allowed. As for Metro Manila, once considered the epicenter of the
Philippine COVID outbreak before Cebu, it will see its standing GCQ status
extended to the 31st with Laguna, Cavite and Rizal.
Other notable locales under GCQ
are Cebu City’s neighbors Lapu-Lapu City and Mandaue City, Ormoc City and
Southern Leyte, the Mindanao cities of Zamboanga and Butuan, and provinces of
Agusan Del Norte and Basilan. Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ) is
divided roughly into “low-risk” and those with “strict local action” (localized
lockdowns for COVID-19 areas of concern). The latter include the cities of
Baguio, Dagupan, Angeles, Lucena, Puerto Princesa, Naga, Iloilo, Bacolod,
Tacloban, Iligan City, Davao City and General Santos, plus many neighboring
provinces. Interestingly, Batanes province, recently visited by tropical
depression Carina, is one of the low-risk MGCQ areas.
As of yesterday, July 15, the
addition of 1,392 new positive cases of COVID-19 has driven the national total
up to 58,850. Of these, 517 more patients have recovered (for 20,976 total)
while 11 more have died (for 1,614 total).
0 comments:
Post a Comment