Recovering as one

A new creature has been added to our COVID-19 vocabulary: “general community quarantine.”

The GCQ is a situation that we can only dream of at this point in Metro Manila and several provinces identified as high-risk for the pandemic, thus meriting another two-week extension of the enhanced community quarantine or ECQ.

Areas under general community quarantine can have limited mass transportation, and online classes in higher learning institutions can proceed and end for the academic year. Work on priority construction projects may resume. More non-leisure shops will open in malls. What “non-leisure” means exactly needs defining. Are bookstores included? Hairdressers and barbershops? The hairdressers may have to wear hazmat suits if they want customers. What about auto repair centers in car dealerships?

All of us still under ECQ, “hard lockdown” and “enhanced lockdown” can only sigh with envy.

In the meantime, people are moving to revive businesses or start new livelihoods, even before the ECQ is lifted. People are increasingly transacting business online. New enterprises are sprouting, such as in the manufacture of a wide variety of face masks and personal protective equipment.

Measures to promote physical distancing will likely remain in place for many more months. Those painted spots on supermarket floors and on sidewalks and streets around public markets, where people now wait in line at a virus-safe distance, will be around for a long time.

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Even with the easing of quarantine restrictions on mass transportation, jeepneys will likely be the last to get the green light, mainly because of the difficulty of enforcing physical distancing inside the cramped vehicles. We simply can’t rely on commuters observing distancing, especially with mass transportation so limited.

So from Metro Manila to Davao, jeepney drivers and operators are improvising ways of enforcing social or physical distancing in their vehicles, in hopes of resuming their operations.

We’re seeing reports of operators and drivers installing plastic sheets and tarpaulins like curtains, and cardboard folded like armrests on the seats to compel distancing.

They may have to install a plastic curtain down the middle between the two rows of seats, too, because knees almost touch between passengers seated across each other in a typical jeepney.

Payment will be made before or after a passenger boards the jeepney, with the money being placed by the passenger in a container held by the driver himself.

Distancing is obviously easier in the light railway services and commuter trains, where there are guards to ensure that the number of passengers will be limited, and where seats can be blocked off to prevent crowding.

This is also possible in buses, but they will have to be subjected to random inspections. There must be guaranteed sanctions against bus companies caught violating distancing rules.

Tricycles, depending on the design, may also be allowed to resume operations. Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto should need little prodding to do this.

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Post-ECQ, export manufacturing companies will likely be required to put in place the minimum health and hygiene measures prescribed by Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez: strict physical distancing, installation of sanitation stations, wearing of protective masks and taking of body temperature.

A law may even be crafted, institutionalizing such measures as part of industrial safety regulations.

On their own, however, company owners and managers are surely assessing the current situation and preparing for their next normal, to include the provision of employee shuttles and expansion of work-from-home schemes.

Technology has its limits, as we keep seeing in our special livestreamed editions of “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News channel. I don’t think we’ll be returning to a regular TV studio anytime soon. But the pandemic is showcasing the usefulness of teleconferencing.

Restaurants may have to settle for sustained take-out operations. I’ve seen several fast-food outlets reopening in recent days. At a Kenny Rogers outlet along Taft Avenue in Manila, there are designated seats to enforce distancing among those waiting for their orders – mostly Grab motorcycle delivery drivers.

The private sector, which has been raring to restart enterprises and prevent the collapse of businesses, can be expected to cooperate in measures to keep out the coronavirus disease 2019.

The government must do its part by providing a safer public health environment. For reasons that Senate probers want to unearth, the government was late in ramping up capabilities for COVID testing, contact tracing, quarantine and isolation after reports about a highly infectious novel coronavirus emerging from China’s Wuhan City first came out in December 2019.

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Creating a safer public health environment is a complicated challenge in the numerous informal settlements all over Metro Manila. Mayors will have to rethink their policies toward such vote-rich but acutely congested urban poor communities, which are now their biggest challenges in containing the pandemic. 

Much of the rest of Metro Manila has long suffered from congestion. It’s an unsustainable region that has long needed a reversal of urban migration. This, however, must be accompanied by the creation of sustainable jobs, decent livelihood opportunities and adequate basic services including public education, utilities and housing outside the urban centers.

These days, certain local government units and even private employers are taking it upon themselves to procure their own testing kits – both the rapid test antibody kits and the “gold standard” polymerase chain reaction rapid tests. The PhilStar media group is currently scouting for suppliers.

To complement such private sector efforts, the government must expand testing centers. Organizations such as the Philippine Red Cross can be tapped for assistance.

Online learning and transactions must be facilitated through the expansion of telecommunications infrastructure. Only about 48 percent of public schools have access to the internet; how can they migrate to online learning? The government must support the private sector in securing the right of way to construct the necessary infrastructure for expanded telco capacity.

Even the national ID system, now being speeded up, needs a good information and telecommunications backbone for its maximum utilizatization.

Everyone is preparing for the next normal, after all forms of lockdowns have been lifted. We must not only heal as one; we must recover economically as one.