MANILA – The government is ready to shift he National Capital Region (NCR) Plus back to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) if necessary, an adviser to the National Task Force against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) said.
According to Dr. Ted Herbosa, the shift of the NCR Plus – namely Metro Manila, Rizal, Bulacan, Cavite, and Laguna – to a more relaxed modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) until the end of the month is “not fixed.”
“Like in any disaster or chaos, you are ready to actually move back to a stricter ECQ,” Herbosa told CNN Philippines’ The Source on Monday. “Modified ECQ is still an ECQ. It’s still an ECQ, we just modify it with lesser restrictions.”He added that the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases made a “balancing act” with the MECQ shift and considered data from both angles of the health and economic sectors.
“When I looked at the minutes of that discussion, I saw the data being presented by our losses in terms of economics,” Herbosa said. “But I also saw that the health sector was also gaining in terms of what needed to be done.”
“The government has ramped up healthcare capacity in the NCR Plus, with more than 3,000 additional beds for patients and more isolation facilities for COVID-19 patients,” he added.
He further stressed that there is a room for improvement in the current COVID-19 testing capacity in the country as the government was able to purchase antigen tests./PN
