Metro Manila and Laguna will shift to the less stringent Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) starting Aug. 21 until the end of the month, but there will still be no dine-in, al fresco dining, beauty salons, barbershops, nail spas and religious services allowed, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said.
Roque said the new lockdown classification was approved by the Inter-Agency Task Force Thursday evening, hours after the Department of Health reported 14,895 new COVID-19 cases yesterday – the second highest number of cases in a day since the pandemic started.
Roque said Bataan will also be placed under MECQ starting Aug. 23 until Aug. 31.
“These latest classifications are without prejudice to the strict implementation of granular lockdowns,” he said.
“In addition, local government units of the aforementioned areas are directed to improve their vaccination rates, Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate (PDITR) strategies, and observance and compliance to Minimum Public Health Standards,” the Palace official added.
He said the stricter MECQ protocols shall be observed in Metro Manila, Laguna and Bataan under their respective inclusive dates.
Thursday’s number of new infections was considered the highest since April 2, when the country registered 15,310 new cases. It is also the ninth straight day that new cases counted more than 10,000.
There were 258 new fatalities yesterday, bringing the COVID-19 death toll to 30,881.
The DOH also reported 8,248 newly-recovered people, bringing the total number of recoveries to 1,648,402.
There were 111,720 active cases of which 95.3 percent were mild, 1.8 percent were asymptomatic, 0.7 percent were critical, 1.3 percent were severe, and 0.87 percent were moderate.
This was the fifth straight day that active infections numbered more than 100,000.
The positivity rate is at 23.8 percent, based on test results of 59,828 individuals who got screened for the virus on Tuesday.
Nationwide, 72 percent of the ICU beds, 61 percent of the isolation beds, 65 percent of the ward beds, and 53 percent of the ventilators, were in use.
In Metro Manila, 73 percent of the ICU beds, 60 percent of the isolation beds, 67 percent of the ward beds, and 61 percent of the ventilators, were in use.
Earlier, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año admitted there were no more funds for cash assistance for people affected by an ECQ lockdown.
In Manila, the director of the Ospital ng Sampaloc said its COVID-19 bed capacity was 90 percent full.
This was a decrease from the 96 percent that it reported on Wednesday, said Dr. Aileen Lacsamana.
“This is still controlled. It’s not yet like our experience last March and April when people queued in the emergency room,” Lacsamana said in an interview with ABS-CBN’s Teleradyo.
Lacsamana said the hospital has one pediatric COVID-19 case, a 2-year-old, while half of its adult virus cases were unvaccinated.
Around 44 percent of its COVID-19 patients are moderate cases, she said.
It has also set up a delivery room tent for pregnant women with COVID-19 as there is only one delivery room inside the hospital, Lacsamana said.
Also on Thursday, Senator Nancy Binay recommended that free cluster testing be carried out in highly dense communities and in areas where COVID cases are high.
Given the government’s poor testing capacity, rationalizing the IATF’s and the DOH’s screening and testing strategies to cover more individuals is necessary to control community infections, she said.
“Why are we not testing enough? What happened to the target of 90,000 to 100,000 tests daily? Given the country’s low testing capacity, how can we be effective in isolating carriers and spreaders? Testing is very crucial in areas where there is an increasing number of COVID cases,”she added.
Binay said that in communities under hard lockdown and in critical zones where surges have been reported, the DOH, together with the LGU, can conduct a full community testing using RT-PCR tests.
“The goal is to test more, not to test all. What we need is a rationalized, more targeted cluster approach to suppress the spread of the virus at the community level,” Binay said.
Meanwhile, independent researchers tracking the pandemic said they were optimistic that Filipinos will be able to celebrate “a brighter” Christmas even with COVID-19.
Ranjit Rye of the OCTA Research Group, said in an interview on “The Mangahas Interviews” that the government made the right decision to place Metro Manila and other areas under a strict lockdown in August to curb the spread of the highly contagious Delta coronavirus
“We will prevail over this Delta variant and because vaccination is ramping up in NCR Plus, we can look forward to a brighter 2021 Christmas once we achieve our vaccine goals, which is population protection for at least the NCR by October,” Rye said.
“It’s going to be a good ending for 2021, that’s my optimistic view. Long term, it’s harder to say it will be done in two or three years. I think we will have to learn to live with the virus,” he said.