Salons, barbershops, and gyms will resume operations tomorrow in Metro Manila and nearby areas as they ease back into the general community quarantine (GCQ).
Dine-in services in restaurants and other food establishments will also resume, but only up to 50% of the usual capacity.
Businesses reopening in the GCQ will be required to appoint employees which will be responsible for implementing the government’s “stricter” health protocols, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said in an interview with ABS-CBN’s Teleradyo today.
Read: ‘Economy will die’: PH Trade Dep’t rejects stricter quarantine as COVID-19 cases top 80k
“These committees [of employees] will be coordinating with the government to implement provisions of [our] health protocol,” Lopez said in English and Filipino, adding that the details of said provisions will be released to the public shortly.
President Rodrigo Duterte announced last night that Metro Manila, Laguna, Bulacan, and Rizal will be under GCQ until Aug. 31 after the two-week modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ). MECQ was imposed on these areas after medical workers called for a “time out” as they struggle to fight COVID-19 in the country’s hospitals.
Health workers had initially asked the government to impose an ECQ, or the strictest form of lockdown in the country. But Duterte said he couldn’t implement it because the government no longer had funds to dole out to Filipinos, despite loaning as much US$7.76 billion so far from various banks including the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
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