PEOPLE talk about...
[1] LIFTING OF QUARANTINE IN CEBU. How could that be done without having enough data on extent of infection in the province and cities, when the testing is not wide and extensive enough to determine the real score on coronavirus here? While two or three days up to Monday showed no new confirmed case, that wouldn't be enough to make prudent decisions. And who will decide? What is the policy here?
[2] COCKFIGHT DERBY IN DAVAO HAVING THE PAPERS. That's why no one was administratively or criminally blamed for the possible infection that a cockfight aficionado caused to hundreds of people. Just because the documents were already approved, the cockfight was not stopped even though the threat of coronavirus was already raging.
Luzon leads, as before
The extension of the "enhanced community quarantine" (ECQ) from April 13 to April 30, announced Tuesday (April 7) by the Inter-agency Task Force (IATF), does not expressly say that Visayas and Mindanao are excluded. But what the law does not include is deemed excluded.
Just like in the order first imposing an ECQ, our equivalent for a lockdown, the decision-makers in Manila limited it to Luzon. It was local leaders who shifted from "general community quarantine" to ECQ.
The National Government, which under the special powers law is authorized to lead in the strategies against coronavirus, has not forgotten the rest of the country. It obviously thinks that in Luzon, where Manila is, resides the core of power. Or it just expects the rest of the country to follow Luzon's lead.
So it must be, on whether to extend the ECQ or lockdown or not. The governor and the mayors, who decided on when the measures would take effect locally, will probably decide for the community, with the "guidance" of IATF.
The lesson from the first phase may have instructed the local leaders to synchronize this time their actions and not race against one another.
'Localizing' ECQs
Representative Bebot Abellanosa has proposed to the inter-agency task force for "localized" quarantines, in which the limits on movement outside households is limited "by barangays, clusters, puroks or sitios or by employment communities such as construction, food production, food processing, manufacturing, call centers, building maintenance and the like."
If they can come up with a procedure that works, it will be worth trying. But the initial barriers are formidable: We don't have a testing, tracing and treatment capability yet. The pockets of virus infestation will have to be identified and cordoned off, the patients isolated and treated, their contacts traced, and other related work done. All that, before the areas that are "virus-free" are cleared for the lifting of the quarantine there.
The IATF has to be more involved in setting up the protocol in localized ECQs that than it has been during these months, in which most of its attention is in Luzon.
If LGUs could hardly agree on ECQ checkpoints and passes when the regulations involve more than one local government, could barangay leaders do better when the localized ECQ traverses borders?
Who are 'politicizing'?
Friday, April 3, Cebu City Vice Mayor Mike Rama posted in his Facebook account that many visitors in his City Hall office informed him that the distribution of rice and other goods to intended beneficiaries in the coronavirus crisis had become "highly politicized."
He didn't give specifics though. Only those sitting as public officials and having control of the distribution of the relief goods could be "politicizing" them. That would mean mostly VM Rama's party mates who control City Hall.
Some of it could be just unclear policy on beneficiaries. One Cebu City barangay captain reportedly admitted doling out the relief goods first to those officially connected with his barangay, such as his tanods and other workers and employees and barangay council members.
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