Senate on 3-week lockdown after 3 senators get COVID-19

MANILA, Philippines — A three-week “lockdown for guests” will be implemented in the Senate premises as the Upper Chamber further tightened its health and safety protocols amid the surging of COVID-19 cases.

During yesterday’s session, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri announced that “due to the rising COVID-19 cases in the last week, where we had three of our colleagues testing positive for COVID-19, the senators decided to tighten our health and safety protocols.”

Sens. Alan Peter Cayetano, Imee Marcos and Cynthia Villar tested positive for COVID, although they still attend sessions online.

“We will receive no guests for three weeks except for resource persons which will be limited to three per agency/organization. The others could participate remotely,” Zubiri said.

Based on the Senate safety advisory, additional safety and health protocols will be implemented starting Aug. 15.

Resource persons should present a negative RT-PCR test result with QR code taken within 24 hours or a negative antigen test result taken within 12 hours from any Department of Health-accredited facility, the advisory declared.

“Self-administered antigen test results without any valid certification shall not be accepted,” it noted.

For committee hearings, each senator may be assisted by only two members of his or her staff, except for the chairperson of the committee.

The Senate further instructed that for session duties, it would retain the two-staff-per-senator rule.

For elevators, the Senate will implement a five-person limitation rule.