After two months of lockdown, a bid to lessen transmission of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Metro Manila citizens emerge from their homes and attempt to go back to work and normalcy.
More businesses opened and public transportation resumed at partial capacity. This is a move that the country’s economy need to prop itself up after weeks of being stagnant.
However, experts have expressed their concern over the premature relaxing of quarantine protocols. No matter the outcome, this shift to general community quarantine will be etched in President Rodrigo Duterte and his administration’s legacy.
“This is his biggest gamble yet because whatever happens, it’s on him,” University of Santo Tomas Political Science Professor Dennis Coronacion expressed.
“This would very much affect the public’s confidence in him mainly because if you think about it, the people who will most likely be affected by the GCQ are the working population, and the small and medium-scale industries,” he added.
A political analyst from the University of the Philippines, Jean Encinas-Franco, said the easing of lockdown risks spawning “chaos” if the virus safeguards prove inadequate.
“It’s going to be ‘wait-and-see.’ We’ll find out once we have a second wave, if there will be another spike in COVID-19 cases that are new ones, and not due to backlogs,” Encinas-Franco said.
