Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte on Monday said she is in favor of further easing the quarantine restrictions in Metro Manila by increasing the operational capacity limit of business establishments in her city as it continues to experience decreasing number of COVID-19 cases.
From more than 1,000 new daily cases at the time Metro Manila was placed under the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in March, Belmonte said the city is now only reporting 130 cases per day.
Its previous daily attack rate of 39 infected individuals per 100,000 people has already gone down to five.
Belmonte also hailed the increasing number of the city's contact tracers, at more than 3,000; isolation facilities, at around 3,000; and ICUs or intensive care units.
The city also ramped up its COVID-19 testing efforts by conducting as many as 4,000 tests per day, she added.
"Given all of these, taken together, I do believe that we are ready for some pagluluwag ng (easing of) restrictions," she said in a DZXL interview.
Belmonte said she is in favor of relaxing the quarantine restrictions not only by increasing the operations capacity of business establishments but also by allowing more people to converge during meetings and conferences.
"But again, my stand is to calibrate or ease restrictions, not suddenly but slowly," she said.