NCR to use common alert level during granular lockdown pilot testing – DILG

MORE OF THIS SOON A police officer keeps watch on a section of Parkland Avenue in Barangay 177, Caloocan City, on Sept. 7, enforcing an example of a granular lockdown. —NINO JESUS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines — Metro Manila, or the National Capital Region (NCR), will have a common alert level in the pilot testing of the alert level system under granular lockdowns, an official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said Saturday.

“For the pilot [testing] in the NCR in the next week, we have agreed that in the NCR only one alert level will be used,”DILG Undersecretary Epimaco Densing said, speaking in Filipino, at the Laging Handa public briefing.

“In fact, alert level 3 is raised over Manila and Valenzuela. But they agreed that, despite the fact that their alert levels are lower, in the whole of the NCR we will implement only one alert level,” he added.

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases earlier trimmed down the quarantine classifications in Metro Manila to enhanced community quarantine and general community quarantine with an alert level system.

As explained by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the four-level alert system will determine if establishments in closed areas, crowded areas, and those that involve close contact activities will be allowed to operate and at what capacity.

The pilot testing of the quarantine alert level system in the capital region starts on Sept. 16, according to Densing.