In a taped address aired on Monday night, President Rodrigo Duterte approved of the recommendation to retain Metro Manila’s general community quarantine (GCQ) status for the entirety of September.
Aside from continuing to build isolation facilities and imposing localized lockdowns, Metro Manila’s mayors also agreed to implement shorter curfew hours to allow longer business operations and slowly open up the economy.
Beginning Sept. 1, the curfew hours in the National Capital Region will now be from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Metro Manila’s mayors previously agreed to a unified curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.
“We have to strike a balance between [health] and [the] economy,” Parañaque Mayor and Metro Manila Council (MMC) head Edwin Olivarez explained.
The decision to retain Metro Manila’s GCQ status comes even after the region reported the most number of new cases at 1,900. As of writing, there are 220,819 COVID-19 cases nationwide with 89,609 recoveries and 1,731 deaths.
Header photo by Grig C. Montegrande of Inquirer.net
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