By Rizal Obanil
Metro Manila Council (MMC) chairman and Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez said that the Metro Manilamayors will still have to study their position on the possible extension or lifting of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez (Mayor Edwin Olivarez FACEBOOK / MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
Olivarez said that the MMC will hold a virtual meeting on the matter at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
In an interview for GMA-7’s “Unang Hirit”, Olivarez pointed out that it is the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) that will have the final say on the matter.
He said that the MMC’s role is merely to give a recommendation to the IATF whether to lift the ECQ or not.
When asked by Arnold Clavio whether he was privy to the stand of the local chief executives, Olivarez answered: “Yes. Kung mapapansin po natin, meron po tayo na mga LGU na naghardlockdown. Katulad po ng Quezon City, katulad po ng Manila, ibig sabihin po nila pinaiiral po yung extreme na lockdown. (... If you will notice there were LGUs that enforced hard lockdown. Like QC, Manila, this means that they implemented the extreme lockdown).”
Government has been considering the possibility transitioning from ECQ to general community quarantine (GCQ), however some camps still want to err on the side of caution, as the number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Metro Manila has not yet considerably gone down.
Olivarez also pointed out that 55 percent of the new cases in the past few days came from the NCR.