Philippines locks down 13 million in Manila

This is an article from The Guardian Website from 6:30 am on Friday 30th July

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday approved the imposition of lockdown measures in the capital region.

The Manila capital region, an urban sprawl of 16 cities home to more than 13 million people, will be placed under the tightest quarantine curbs from 6 August to 20 August.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a televised address. “While it is a painful decision, this is for the good of all.”

The lockdown will prevent people leaving their homes, except for essential shopping, while indoor and al fresco dining is banned.

The Philippines also extended a ban on travelers coming from 10 countries including India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates to 15 August.

Already battling the second-worst coronavirus outbreak in Asia, the Philippines has so far recorded over 1.57 million confirmed Covid cases and more than 27,000 deaths.

The country has reported 216 cases of the Delta variant, but health experts say there could be more undetected cases because of the slow pace of the country’s genome sequencing.

While we are seeing this for the first time this morning, we assume this will have an impact on internal transportation, distribution, and will affect workers – although in the past food production workers have had special passees to enable them to get to work.

It does bring to the forefront that many countries are still battling COVID and with just 5% of the population vaccinated in the Philippines, they are a long way behind the UK in terms of getting back to normal.

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