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Coronavirus Philippines
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Coronavirus: Metro Manila becomes a ghost town under Philippines government lockdown

  • The Philippine capital is normally choked with traffic and activity but the government’s community quarantine has now emptied its streets
  • The quarantine has been criticised because nearly 3 million people commute daily and at least 1 million fled before the quarantine took effect

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A Philippine soldier at a checkpoint in Valenzuela City. Photo: Xinhua
Raissa Robles
As the Philippines confronts an unprecedented health crisis in the form of the coronavirus outbreak, with public confusion heightened by contradictory orders from authorities, an unfamiliar hush had by Sunday fallen over its capital.
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In Metro Manila, traffic was magically cleared from the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue ring road, known as Edsa, normally choked by infamous gridlock. The sounds of blaring music and honking cars, the rumble and screech of passenger buses revving up in stops and starts – all that was gone as the community quarantine imposed by President Rodrigo Duterte took effect.

The streets emptied of people and transport, as they might during a Manny Pacquiao boxing match or on Good Friday. This time, though, it was because of the coronavirus: a silent killer that has turned loved ones into unwitting hosts.

The government has responded with a wide-ranging quarantine, enforced by heavily armed soldiers and police. A video demonstration showed soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles practising the inspection of a passenger bus, leading some residents to assume military rule had been imposed.

By Saturday night, dozens of military and police checkpoints had sprung up around the border of the capital, mainly to scrutinise the papers of those seeking entry.

The government has relaxed entry restrictions for the nearly 3 million people who commute daily from neighbouring provinces to work in the capital, and this heavily debated provision was the major sticking point in establishing the quarantine guidelines.

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The concession was finally agreed late on Friday among members of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF-EID) and Duterte’s finance team, allowing workers to enter and to keep factories and offices open. It will be subject to further review.

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