The Department of Tourism (DOT) reminded tourists from NCR-plus areas that non-essential travel outside the bubble is still prohibited under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ).
In a statement, the DOT urged leisure travelers from the NCR-plus to "postpone their travel plans to any areas outside the bubble until such time that the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EIMD) will lift the travel restrictions."
The Department earlier statd that it will only push for the resumption of travel in and out of the NCR-plus once the strict community quarantine is lifted as recommended by medical experts.
Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal — collectively known as NCR-plus — are currently under MECQ until April 30. The government previously placed these areas under strict ECQ between March 29 and April 11 amid renewed surge in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.
The government's pandemic task force earlier said that only essential travelers and Authorized Persons Outside Residence (APOR) are permitted to go outside the bubble during the implementation of the MECQ.
These include health/emergency frontline personnel; government officials and frontline personnel; duly authorized humanitarian assistance actors; persons traveling for medical/humanitarian reasons/going to the airport for international trips; persons crossing zones for work or business permitted in the zone of destination and going back home; and returning or repatriated overseas Filipino workers and other overseas Filipinos returning to their places of residence.