The Philippines placed the Metro Manila region and nearby provinces under lockdown for a week from today to stem the nation’s worst COVID-19 surge that is overwhelming hospitals in its key economic area.
The national capital region (NCR) and the adjacent Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal provinces would be under an enhanced community quarantine, the nation’s strictest classification of movement curbs, until Sunday, Philippine government spokesman Harry Roque said on Saturday.
A curfew from 6pm to 5am would be imposed during the lockdown, Roque said.
Photo: Reuters
“Our health care utilization rate has reached a critical level in NCR and nearby provinces,” Roque said. “We really want to take drastic measures because the rise in cases has been drastic because of these new variants. Drastic threats warrant drastic response.”
The stay-at-home order would have minimal economic impact as it coincides with a long Easter weekend where offices and financial markets are shut today and tomorrow, Roque said.
The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) would stick to the shortened trading hours implemented in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, PSE president Ramon Monzon said yesterday.
Bonds, foreign currency and swap trading hours would be unchanged from Dec. 1 when the Bankers Association of the Philippines went back to the pre-pandemic schedule, PSE managing director Benjamin Castillo said.
The government had tightened mobility in the capital and the surrounding provinces for two weeks from Monday last week, but cases continued to spike, hitting a record 9,808 on Friday.
Another 9,595 infections were added on Saturday, taking the total to 712,442. Daily infections have risen more than five times from the start of the year, while the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 rose to 16 percent last week from about 7 percent in January.
The Philippines, which implemented one of the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns last year, had its worst-ever recession, prompting economic managers to push for a sustained reopening and targeted restrictions rather than a hard lockdown. GDP shrank 9.5 percent last year, and the contraction is expected to persist this quarter.
The week-long lockdown will likely cut less than 1 percent from total economic output and can be offset by the impact of the corporate income tax cut signed into law on Friday, Michael Ricafort, an economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp, wrote in a note yesterday.
Infections are rising globally even as countries ramp up vaccinations amid efforts to reopen economies and revive social activities.
In the Philippines, fewer than one-third of the 1.7 million health workers had been inoculated as of Tuesday, while the country has received more than 1.1 million vaccine doses.
About 2 million more from AstraZeneca and Sinovac Biotech are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Similar to the strict lockdown imposed a year ago, residents in areas affected must work from home if they are able, may only leave for essentials and are barred from holding mass gatherings. Hospitals and health emergency services, manufacturers of medical supplies, farms, and delivery of food and medicine are allowed to operate as usual.
Malls would be shut, except for tenants such as pharmacies, hardware stores, supermarkets, and businesses engaged in food delivery and takeout.
Businesses trading in other essential goods and services, including media establishments, can operate at up to 50 percent capacity, while industries including capital markets, finance, telecommunications and airlines are among those that must operate with a skeletal workforce.
Public transport including trains would be allowed to run at limited capacity while priority construction projects can continue. The capital region, with a population of about 13 million, accounts for nearly half of the nation’s total virus cases.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees