MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte has raised the idea of imposing “localized lockdowns” across the country rather than adopting city-wide and province-wide community quarantine to fight the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.
This comes after Duterte revealed his plan to prioritize his administration’s Covid-19 response efforts amid the emergence of variants of concern, including the more transmissible Delta variant.
“Whether the rise in the number of cases is due to the Delta variant or not, we need to recalibrate our response,” Duterte said in his prerecorded Talk to the People delivered Monday night but aired Tuesday morning. “We are also evaluating whether granular or localized lockdown would work best in our current situation.”
Duterte also urged the National Task Force Against Covid-19 to explore at the advantages of instituting localized lockdowns across the country.
He issued the new order while lamenting the fact that the Philippines had the highest daily Covid-19 case count on Monday.
The country recorded 22,366 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, bringing the total number of coronavirus infections to 1,976,202.
Around 1,794,278 individuals have already recovered, while 33,330 people have died as a result of Covid-19.
There are still 148,594 active Covid-19 cases in the country.
Despite the increase in Covid-19 infections, Duterte expressed gratitude for the country’s low Covid-19 death rate.
“There’s a rise of Covid cases all over [the world]. Hirap ang Amerika ngayon, ang Europe is suffering from a… Maraming namatay. Turkey, maraming patay. Saudi Arabia, mas maraming patay. Itong atin, hawa lang. Ang patay natin, hindi masyadong ganoon karami. (America, Europe, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are struggling because of Covid-19-related deaths. In our case, many are catching the virus but there are only a few deaths),” Duterte said.
For the time being, Metro Manila and other parts of the country will be placed under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), the second strictest community quarantine status, until September 7 in order to deal with rising bed occupancy and allow local government units to ramp up vaccination rollout, according to Duterte.
Duterte also encouraged Filipinos to continue wearing face masks, observe frequent handwashing, and practicing strict social distancing to protect themselves from Covid-19.
“Let us continue to be safe from Covid and its variants by continuing to observe our minimum public health standards — mask, hugas, iwas (wear a mask, wash hands, and observe a distance). And please [get] vaccinated as soon as your turn comes and avoid being complacent about protocols,” he said.
Duterte also encouraged his fellow Filipinos to take advantage of the opportunity to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
“Alam mo, sabi ko sa inyo, walang iba, ang panlaban natin sa Covid ay ang bakuna. Meron tayong problema ngayon, nag-mutate, may variants, nag-kaniyang sarili, nag-ibang anyo ang mga animal (You know, I am telling you, our only weapon against Covid is the vaccine. We also have a problem now because the virus is mutating, there are other variants already),” he said.
Based on a presentation made by NTF Against Covid-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr., approximately 33,099,392 doses of Covid-19 vaccine have already been administered nationwide as of Aug. 30.
A number of 13,784,681 people have been fully vaccinated, with a total of 19,317,711 people who have received the first dose.
In its Resolution 135-A, approved on August 26, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) urged local governments (LGUs) whose jurisdictions had a community transmission of Covid-19 to conduct localized lockdowns. Under the resolution, LGUs should enforce localized community quarantine and increase the availability of quarantine facilities in “priority” or “critical” areas with community transmission.
