COVID-19 scare tactic: Checkpoints set up with coffins

‘STAYHOME OR…’ Dark humor may prove to be just as infectious as the coronavirus in some communities in Luzon, like Barangay Mulawin in Orani, Bataan province, where village officials display on the street a white coffin inscribed with a message stressing the need to comply with the monthlong quarantine. —PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY THE MULAWIN VILLAGE GOVERNMENT

SANTO TOMAS, PAMPANGA—A coffin on the street of this town, known as the province’s top coffin maker, has become a grim warning to the public of that lurking killer that is the new coronavirus.

Police and church leaders displayed the white coffin on the middle of the road with a message that read: “Stay at home or stay inside (the coffin).”

Fr. Ronnie Cao, San Matias parish priest, described the stunt as the “wit of the Kapampangan in time of COVID-19.” Pampanga has three confirmed coronavirus cases.

Strong message

The coffin also drove home its point at a village in Orani town, Bataan province.

Marvin de la Cruz, 47, barangay chair of Mulawin, placed two white coffins at the checkpoint as “a strong message to everyone wishing to violate the enhanced community quarantine.”

‘Stay home or…’

The coffins, borrowed from Punzalan Funeral Home, also bore the sign, “Stay home, or stay inside.”

“If the coffins get damaged, I’d have to pay for them,” De la Cruz said.

Now, few people passed by that checkpoint, the village official said.

In Benguet province, policemen manning checkpoints in Itogon town have also used coffins as a barricade, with the message, “Stay home or stay here.”

Itogon has remained free of the virus, although the municipal health office said it had so far recorded 30 new cases under investigation and monitoring. —REPORTS FROM TONETTE OREJAS AND GREG REFRACCION