Life In The Time of COVID-19

Sounds like Life In the Time of Cholera isn’t it? I actually got the idea of the title of this blog post from it.

Today is the first day of the community quarantine in Metro Manila and also in our town upon the government’s directive.  I doubt if community quarantine is more pleasing to hear than a total lockdown.

Every household here in our subdivision received a two-page quarantine guidelines which shall be enforced today here in our town. After watching the Sunday mass online, I watched those videos of the initial steps being done today. There are several check points put up here in Cainta to prevent commuters in other neighboring towns to loiter around without official purpose. It created traffic of course, thermal scanning those riding in public utility vehicles, asking motorized commuters if they are on official business making others turn around and go back to where they came from. I just noticed that some enforcers and police officers have no protective masks. They have also put up health help desks in the corners with a doctor in attendance.

Here are some of the salient points our good mayor has emphasized to all residents of Cainta. Travel within by its residents are allowed. Restraint, however is requested on meets that do not appear to be urgent or critical in nature. In the even that a meeting is very necessary, social distancing among participants is required.

Border crossing to and from Cainta shall be allowed solely for work purposes, you have to present an ID or a certification from your company.  I guess this also holds through when you live in the town and your work is in Makati City or other parts of the National Capital Region or Metro Manila. Work in all private offices of Cainta will continue. The employer should provide masks, alcohol and disinfectants to mitigate probability of acquiring the said virus. They may also adopt a work-at-home if it is applicable. Nissa works as a manager at Bank of PI, they are required a four-day workweek provided they complete ten hours a day. She will save a day to spend with Nate because according to her, she goes home around 8pm every night anyway.

Passing through vehicles commuting from and to neighboring local towns and cities are allowed subject to thermal scanning procedures to be performed by those manning border personnel.

Public transport will remain operational provided they observe wearing masks  for both drivers and passengers  and providing alcohol to commuters.

Here is the sad part for me. Our priest friend Fr. Aly messaged me yesterday that there would be no regular masses to be held until further notice but you can watch them online.  All religious, civic and social gatherings until the lifting of the quarantine period will have to be temporarily suspended.

No classes for the month  until April 14th.

They are thinking of  imposing curfew hours for Metro Manila from 8pm to 5am. Not sure it it will be pushed through One problem I see there is that, if you leave the office at 5pm and it’s a sad fact that it is so hard to take a ride when you are commuting and you also have to consider the traffic, I doubt if  a three-hour window would suffice if you live far from your place of work.

I don’t watch reports anymore on television. I just rely on the internet for news. Our Church will be praying the Oratio Imperata hourly and we can pray with them online.

Life in the time of COVID-19 is certainly changing everyone’s perspective. At present we have 111 positive cases and 8 deaths.

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