The enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) status in the National Capital Region Plus (NCR Plus) bubble will be in force for another week beginning April 5, Malacañang announced on Saturday.
Retaining the ECQ classification in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal was based on the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said.
“Nag-rekomenda po ang IATF na pahabain pa ang enhanced community quarantine ng minimum ng isang linggo sa buong Metro Manila at mga probinsya ng Laguna, Bulacan, Cavite at Rizal (The IATF recommended the extension of enhanced community quarantine for a minimum of one week in Metro Manila and provinces of Laguna, Bulacan, Cavite, and Rizal),” he said.
Local government units (LGUs) in NCR Plus, he added, are directed to intensify the prevent-detect-isolate-treat-reintegrate (PDITR) measures.
“Nire-require po natin ngayon na magkaroon ng daily monitoring ang mga lokal na pamahalaan, ang ating NTF (National Task Force) czars para po malaman natin kung ano ang resulta ng pina-igting natin na PDITR (We are requiring the local governments and our NTF czars to conduct a daily monitoring in order for us to know the outcome of implementing intensified PDITR),” Roque said.
He said LGUS must likewise ensure the strict enforcement of quarantine and health protocols and go after quarantine violators.
The quarantine status may be relaxed to modified ECQ the week after if PDITR measures can slow down Covid-19 infections.
According to the report released by OCTA Research on Friday, the average new daily cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) dropped in NCR Plus following the implementation of ECQ.
OCTA Research found that Covid-19 infection growth rate in NCR Plus declined to “40 percent or less,” indicating that government interventions, specifically the imposition of ECQ, “were effective in slowing the growth of the pandemic.”
Meanwhile, modified ECQ is imposed in Quirino province and Santiago City, Isabela until April 15 and 30, respectively.
The less restrictive general community quarantine is implemented in Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Batangas, Tacloban City, Iligan City, Davao City, and Lanao del Sur for the whole month of April.
The rest of the country is under modified GCQ, the most relaxed quarantine status.
New cases, recoveries
The Department of Health (DOH) on Saturday reported recoveries have reached 604,905 or 77.2 percent of the total confirmed cases after 599 new survivors.
It also tallied 12, 576 additional cases, bringing the total case count to 784,043, and 103 new fatalities that raised the death toll to 13,423 or 1.71 percent of the total cases.
On Friday, the DOH explained that the new infection tally reached 15,310 because it failed to add the 3,709 cases that should have been reported on Wednesday.
“On March 31, 2021, the DOH reported only 6,128 new cases due to CovidKaya system issue. After system checks, validation and deduplication were made, 3,709 additional cases were confirmed. These cases were added to today’s cases, thus totaling to 15,310,” it said. (PNA)
