THE Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) on Thursday, October 15, 2020, approved the adjustment of age-based stay-at-home restrictions.
Persons from 15 to 65 years of age are now allowed to go out. Local government units (LGUs) may impose a higher age limit for minors, depending on the COVID-19 situation in their respective jurisdictions.
Under Resolution No. 79, the IATF also updated the list of authorized persons outside their residences (Apor) to include returning or repatriated overseas Filipino workers and overseas Filipinos returning to their places of residence and other persons transported through the efforts of the national government upon observance of the necessary quarantine protocols with the concurrence of the receiving LGUs.
Apor includes health and emergency frontline services personnel, government officials and government frontline personnel, duly-authorized humanitarian assistance actors, persons traveling for medical or humanitarian reasons, persons going to the airport for travel abroad, and anyone crossing zones for work or business permitted in the zone of destination and going back home.
The task force also updated its definitions of interzonal movement and intrazonal movement.
Interzonal movement is defined as the movement of people, goods and services between provinces, highly urbanized cities, and independent component cities under different community quarantine classification.
Intrazonal movement, meanwhile, refers to the movement of people, goods and services between provinces, highly urbanized cities and independent component cities under the same community quarantine classification, without transiting through an area placed under a different classification.
Interzonal movement of persons not authorized outside of residences (non-Apor) between areas placed under general community quarantine (GCQ) or modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) for any purpose shall be permitted, subject to the reasonable regulations imposed by the LGU concerned, or in the case of Boracay Island, subject to those imposed by the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force.
The same applies with the intrazonal movement of non-Apor across areas placed under GCQ or MGCQ and the interzonal movement of non-Apor between areas placed under MGCQ and the new normal.
The IATF enjoined LGUs not to cover workers, Apor, and necessary establishments in the application of their curfew ordinances.
LGUs were also urged to coordinate between and among each other to standardize curfew rules and relax curfew hours. (PR)