(Eagle News) – The enhanced community quarantine is now in effect until April 30 in the whole of Luzon.
This was after President Rodrigo Duterte approved the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases for the quarantine extension, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles announced on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.
Nograles said that after the President delivered his address to the nation on Monday night, the IATF again verified if he had indeed approved its recommendation for an extension, and he said that he did.
“Enhanced community quarantine is hereby extended until 11:59 p.m. of April 30,” he said.
There is no need to impose the enhanced community quarantine in Visayas and Mindanao, he said.
Nograles said that based on what the medical experts have said, the earliest effect of the quarantine in Luzon that had been first announced on March 12 and imposed on March 15, would have been seen on March 29, but that it would still be in mid-April that clearer results could be observed.
That is why he said that they had to extend the quarantine until April 30.
Medical experts, scientists, and mathematicians are sayingis still too early to tell the effects of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), Nogralies said.
Mass testing has to be further widened in the whole country until “we can do 8,000 to 10,000 tests per day.”
“We really have to push it back, yung peak,” Nograles, who also serves as the spokesperson of the IATF, noted.
He stressed that with strategic mass testing, with more certified sub-national laboratories and strategic testing centers around the country, by April 27, the country would even be able to do COVID-19 tests from 13,000 to 20,000 tests per day.
If that is reached, the peak can be pushed back until 2021.
With strengthened mass testing, more COVID-19 suspected cases will be identified, isolated and treated if they turn to be confirmed cases.
The government is striving for a 24-hour turnaround time for tests, wherein results can be obtained in just one day, he said.
The IATF, which includes the Department of Health, said that the ECQ has to be extended until April 30 so that the full effect of the quarantine can be measured and studied as the government tries to flatten the curve, while also increasing the health capacity of Luzon and the rest of the country.
Nograles said that medical experts will be reporting the progression of the country’s programs against COVID-19 on a per region basis weekly to the IATF.
(Eagle News Service)
