Concepcion bats for simpler, ‘storm-signal’ quarantine classifications

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion. (File photo from Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — Presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion has proposed to refine the government’s quarantine classifications and to make it similar to the declaration of storm signals and help prevent confusion among its implementers and the public.

“The problem is when you have a quarantine classification of ECQ [enhanced community quarantine] and four levels of GCQ [general community quarantine] with a total of five levels and you have a granular lockdown, how do you implement that? It becomes really confusing. It becomes too detailed,” Concepcion said Friday in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.

“This is where I suggested to a couple of IATF members that maybe they have to refine this, maybe we can just bring it down to three like a storm, we have signal 1, 2, and 3. So you may have ECQ and you have two levels of GCQ.”

“And then you approach it on a granular level because it’s better than locking down that entire province,” he went on.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has been changing quarantine levels in parts of the country from most lenient to the strictest—modified GCQ, GCQ, modified ECQ, and ECQ.

Eventually, the pandemic task force came up with another classification which is “GCQ with heightened restrictions.”

Recently, Metro Manila was supposed to be the pilot test area for a new strategy where it will be placed under GCQ and at the same time, will have granular lockdowns on small areas with high COVID-19 cases.

The government recalled the decision and instead extended the enforcement of MECQ in the region amid the continuously high number of new COVID-19 cases.

/MUF