EVEN before President Rodrigo Duterte declared late Sunday evening the return to a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) for Metro Manila and adjoining provinces to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, the iconic Old Swiss Inn already announced it was closing its dine-in service for two weeks starting August 3.
Katrina Limcaoco, managing director of the popular restaurant in Makati and Paco, now in its 74th year, told me she had been wary of the rising number of Covid-19 cases reported by the Department of Health. “I was already telling my staff and my family to practice ECQ protocol the week before. We already prepared barracks for our staff and told all people to work from home as much as possible, beef up their data connections, and move all data to the cloud.”
Then the call of the health-care workers came on Saturday for the metro to return to ECQ to give the medical community breathing space and cope with the surge in Covid cases, which had impacted even their own colleagues. “They are our frontliners who take care of us. I felt I didn’t need to wait for any official announcement to contribute. If it helps in any small way, then I’d do it,” she added.
Even her staff agreed it was a good idea to temporarily close their doors, even if they would rack up losses again. “They were also getting scared about the number of people coming in,” she said. “The momentum was building and we were seeing the return of guests. But I figured it was only for two weeks [although every day of sales counts]. And I would still have my delivery and take-out sales, which is now the majority of my sales.”
More importantly, she said, closing the dine-in service “would give my staff peace of mind and they will be able to continue working with less fear.” Celebrated for its corned beef, deep fried pork knuckles, sausages, and raclette, Old Swiss Inn is accredited with the Department of Tourism (DOT) and had to adhere to stricter health and sanitation standards when it reopened its dine-in service under general community quarantine (GCQ) declared on June 1. (See “Branded restos, popular food chains secure DOT accreditation,” in BusinessMirror, July 1, 2020.) As of July 2, there were 155 DOT-accredited restaurants in Metro Manila, up from 78 in 2019.
Aside from a ban on dine-in service in restaurants, under MECQ rules, hotels are also closed unless they have long-term staying guests, foreign nationals who are already checked-in as of March 17, and frontliners. Tourist destinations such as water parks, reservation service and related services are likewise prohibited from operating, as well as travel and tour agencies. Domestic flights are cancelled while select international flights are allowed, according to Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque in a news briefing on Monday.
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat expressed the DOT’s gratitude to the tourism stakeholders such as hotels “for investing time, effort and money to respond to the needs of the national government since the start of the crisis.”
Under modified general community quarantine, GCQ and MECQ, “our accommodation enterprises have complied with IATF-EID [Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases] mandated minimum health and safety standards, and were given Certificates of Authority to Operate [CAO] by the DOT. For instance, our National Capital Region office had already issued more than 600 CAOs representing over 62,000 rooms. These hotels can continue to operate under MECQ with a skeleton force and still housing our overseas Filipino workers [OFWs], returning overseas Filipinos [ROFs], workers from essential industries, and stranded tourists,” she underscored.
Hotel Sales and Marketing Association Inc. (HSMA) President Christine Ann U. Ibarreta said many of her members had various reactions to the MECQ. Quoting one member: “It’s disappointing to be back to MECQ because some people are not disciplined enough to follow health and sanitation protocols. The hotels are currently still accommodating OFWs, ROFs and stranded individuals. The staff will be billeted again at the hotels as public transportation is not available for use.”
Another HSMA member opined that while “it’s sad for us to go back to MECQ, we have to support our frontliners so that more [Covid-19 patients] can be saved.” And one member noted: “It’s just so sad that we are relying on [a] vaccine and not because of a clear action plan. We’re back to MECQ because of the frontliners’ request. Let’s do our part in our own household adhering to the guidelines to support medical frontliners.”
For her part, Ibarreta averred, “This time, people should seriously adhere to government’s call to ensure that sanitation is given priority to prevent further increase in Covid cases. I’m enjoining everyone to please follow these health and sanitary protocols.”
Personally, I feel for the medical health workers who had appealed for a “time-out” to keep Metro Manila residents at home, so they can cope with the rising number of Covid-19 cases. Their ranks are also being decimated as their tireless work, helping out at the hospitals amid the pandemic, has also lowered their immunity, making them more susceptible to the dreaded virus.
But all these quarantines—whatever authorities want to call them—are useless unless government steps up its contract-tracing program and implement mass testing using RT-PCR. This has already been proven in many countries as more effective methods to contain the virus, aside from quarantining infected people, whether symptomatic or otherwise.
If authorities just go about doing the same ineffective procedures and programs, I’m afraid this close-open, close-open quarantine strategy will keep being implemented, without making any dent on government’s ability to contain the virus.