MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Thursday night said three more areas will join Metro Manila under enhanced community quarantine, just a few hours before the stricter lockdown takes effect.
President Rodrigo Duterte approved the recommendation of the pandemic task force to put Laguna, Iloilo City and Cagayan de Oro under the said quarantine status.
It will begin on August 6 and will last up to August 15, according to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.
There were talks this week of putting the entire Calabarzon, the Philippines' most populous region with 16.1 million residents, to ECQ.
Apart from Laguna, three other areas in that region will also be under stricter quarantine.
Roque said Cavite, Lucena City and Rizal, would be placed in modified ECQ.
Batangas, meanwhile, would be under general community quarantine with heightened restrictions along with Quezon province.
The new quarantine classifications were ordered as the country faces a new increase in coronavirus cases.
Experts said the uptick in infections is a new surge. Health officials, despite shying away from that term, have admitted that cases are on the rise across regions.
The Department of Health has said, too, that the impact of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is now being felt on a national scale.
On Thursday, there were additional 8,127 coronavirus infections, and 116 new cases of the Delta variant.
The overall count of cases has since stood at 1,627,816, with deaths at 28,427. — Christian Deiparine with reports from The STAR/Alexis Romero