{"id":247626,"date":"2020-03-10T01:03:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T05:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=247626"},"modified":"2020-03-10T01:03:07","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T05:03:07","slug":"no-lockdown-in-ncr-until-covid-19-cases-reach-thousands-prrd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/03\/10\/no-lockdown-in-ncr-until-covid-19-cases-reach-thousands-prrd\/","title":{"rendered":"No lockdown in NCR until Covid-19 cases reach thousands: PRRD"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Duterte made this remark after Albay Representative Joey Salceda suggested a one-week suspension of all work and classes in Metro Manila after new cases of Covid-19 were recorded in the cities of Quezon, Pasig, and Marikina. (Pixabay photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 It is \u201ctoo early\u201d to consider placing Metro Manila on a lockdown, President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday night, unless the country reaches sustained community transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).<\/p>\n

Duterte made this remark after Albay Representative Joey Salceda suggested a one-week suspension of all work and classes in Metro Manila after new cases of Covid-19 were recorded in the cities of Quezon, Pasig, and Marikina.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not reached that kind of contamination.\u00a0Iisa-isa lang<\/em>\u00a0(One at a time). With this transmission, you want to close down the economy at this time?\u201d he said in a press briefing in Malaca\u00f1ang after a meeting with members of the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.<\/p>\n

He warned that placing Metro Manila on a lockdown would make it difficult to transport basic goods and necessities such as rice and gasoline.<\/p>\n

Currently, there are 24 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country.<\/p>\n

He said the need to lockdown Metro Manila may arise once the number of confirmed cases would reach thousands.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe\u00a0kung ‘yang lugar na pinuntahan ng mga Pilipino, magsabi ka ang namatay doon mag-abot na ng 20,000 o sa isang lugar may 5,000, sigurado<\/em>, I will lock (Maybe if the places visited by Filipinos, you\u2019d say the fatalities there reached 20,000 or in one area 5,000, for sure, I will order a lockdown),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, the President was hoping there would be no further increase in the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he said that he is still satisfied with the government\u2019s response in preventing the spread of Covid-19 in the country despite the confirmed cases reaching 24.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. You cannot prevent it. ‘Yung (The) contamination, if it is passed from one person to another, you cannot prevent it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He maintained that the government has \u201cdone everything in preparation\u201d to contain the deadly disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cNandiyan na lahat. Pulis<\/em>\u00a0are there. Health workers.\u00a0Tayo naman dito<\/em>\u00a0(It\u2019s all there. Police are there. Health workers. We are here too). We formulate the rules to follow. There are rules to follow here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a Laging Handa press briefing, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said placing a lockdown \u201cmight be premature\u201d until there is evidence of sustained community transmission.<\/p>\n

He said that the DOH respected local chief executives\u2019 decision to suspend classes to minimize the transmission of the disease.<\/p>\n

Salceda, chair of the House ways and means committee, said that a lockdown of NCR \u201cshould not be off the table if needed to slow down the transmission of Covid-19\u201d.<\/p>\n

He emphasized that the cost of mass community transmission \u201cfar outweigh\u201d the economic losses arising from preemptive actions.<\/p>\n

Moreover, he said there should also be a postponement of bus trips and domestic flights, and the closure of railways and expressways, such as the South Luzon Expressway and the North Luzon Expressway.<\/p>\n

Duterte has issued a proclamation formally declaring a state of public health emergency throughout the Philippines after the health department reported the first known local transmission of Covid-19.<\/p>\n

He also ordered the suspension of classes in all levels in Metro Manila to minimize students’ risk of contracting the disease.<\/p>\n

DOH has also placed the country under Covid-19 Alert System to Code Red Sub-Level 1 to prepare for a possible increase in suspected and confirmed cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2014 It is \u201ctoo early\u201d to consider placing Metro Manila on a lockdown, President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday night, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":240648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-azer-parrocha","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247629,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247626\/revisions\/247629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}