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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Has It Come To This?

 I went out for a while to buy my maintenance medicine for another month. I was surprised  by the number of people at the drugstore, and that is not even the busiest branch of  Mercury Drug.  What is even more surprising is that there are no bottles of Alcohol left on their shelves. All they had are a few small bottles of hand sanitizer for kids and three bottles of hand sanitizer for adult.  I chose to buy the two so I’ll have something in stock, one senior citizen grabbed the remaining one.

There used to be several bottles of alcohol when I went there last month, but they are all gone. Mercury Drug provides free Alcohol  in their counter to rub your hands though. I went to a small grocery store where I bought two bottles of  70% solution ethyl alcohol (yes, combined with moisturizer). I now have five of them in our medicine cabinet.  Last Saturday, I also bought a pack of disposable hand gloves (it contains 100 pcs). Gonna use them when we go to the market and when we go  to the grocery stores. Long ago, I read somewhere that one of the dirtiest items you can ever find in  a supermarket is their push cart. Some people have this habit of having their kids ride on it while grocery-shopping which is not practical because they don’t regularly clean it. When  someone buys cold cuts and fresh food items, the drips are left on the cart.

Has it come to this?

I have a friend who went to the supermarket yesterday to buy only a few items. She was so surprised when there was a line-up of cars at the parking lot and so many shoppers were buying loads and boxes of groceries as if there is no tomorrow. They’re in a panic that this corona  virus might bring further damage to the country.  She only intended to buy three items and ended up with three bags  full of groceries.  Only  those who have enough in their pockets will be able to because an individual with a lowly job could not even afford to buy grocery items in bulk. Nakakalungkot.   I am saddened by this turn of events.  People are growing crazy, so much more if you have a government whose priority does not include the health and well-being of its citizens.

I read  the report of a journalist friend saying that private hospitals don’t have their own test kits.  Department of Health admitted in a Senate hearing a few days ago that they only have 2,000 test kits and the number of cases is increasing.  The budget for the department was slashed by 10B and went to the coffers of the president. They substantially increased the budget of the Office of the  President by the billions. Even The Department of Education was not spared.

This contact tracing that they are doing and not reporting the true numbers of positive cases here is just alarming.  The local residents who were found positive with COVID-19 might have infected others too without their knowledge.

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The Dreaded Covid-19

Yesterday, we just had a confirmed case positive of NCov19  here in our town, the fifth one according to Dept. of Health (DOH). I wonder  if they are telling the truth or hiding something so as not to create panic or offend their big boss who said a few weeks ago that “this too will pass”. There is something not right.

Even if the place is quite far from us, I am still wary of public places where there are so many people. Reports say that the patient has no history of travel but regularly visited the mosque at Greenhills, San Juan City. He is now confined at RITM (Research Institute for Tropical Medicine).

Our town mayor, Mayor Atty. Kit Nieto has posted this message on his Facebook page a few minutes ago:

“I am constrained to suspend classes in all levels both public and private from today (assuming there are) until Tuesday to provide ample opportunity for the general services office to distribute additional masks on top of the 50,000 pieces we have already distributed a couple of weeks ago.. all cainta students will be provided face masks and protective sanitizers and vitamin c to mitigate the probabilities of the virus spreading.. more directives to come.. all trike drivers. And puj drivers are likewise directed to wear masks while plying their routes.. GSO Lyndon Camacho Batanes procure what is necessary should the resources be inadequate”.

With his health team, he visited those places close to the patient to distribute face masks, disinfectant and vitamin C  and letters telling them of the latest news by DOH.  Good thing our town mayor is proactive. It might be hard to contain this virus when it spreads but at least the people are aware of what to do. Salute Mayor Nieto 🙂

 It’s now code RED for DOH, his wife was also tested positive.

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