The disturbing record-high 8,019 coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) cases in March 22 has prompted the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to order the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the local government units (LGUs) to strictly enforce further the wearing of face mask and face shield requirements in all public places to increase the people’s protection against the virus.

DILG Undersecretary for Operations Epimaco Densing III explained that wearing face masks and face shields in public places is mandatory under the minimum public health standard (MPHS) policy of the government.

Previously, the public was only required to wear both face masks and face shields only in enclosed buildings like malls, supermarkets, wet markets and other similar places.

With the third record high of COVID-19 cases in the last four days, the Philippines has now logged a total of 671,792 cases as of March 22 despite the imposition of the general community quarantine (GCQ) protocol with restrictions in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite collectively known as the NCR (National Capital Region) plus.

DILG Undersecretary and spokesperson Jonathan Malaya revealed on Tuesday, March 23, that the use of face masks provides 91 percent protection against the virus compared to the 32 percent safety from the face shield.

“According to the medical experts, the combined population effectiveness of both the face masks and face shields is only at 26 percent instead of 80 percent if use was more prevalent, therefore we have to increase the use of face shields to get the maximum protection at this time of the surge,” Malaya said.

With the COVID-19 breaching the 8,000 mark, Malaya admitted that the “challenge now is to get more people to use both the face masks and the face shields and not only the face masks.’’

“We will be mobilizing all our force multipliers in the barangays to enforce the face shield protocol,” Malaya stressed.

Malaya noted that another challenge is to promote the use of face masks at home especially in households with senior citizens and those with underlying medical conditions.

“When we are at home, our guard goes down so we discourage accepting visitors from outside the immediate family or household,” he added.

While the hospitals are able to cope up with the COVID-19 patients, Malaya added “we have to do more to get people to use face shields to prevent them from getting infected and possibly overwhelm the healthcare system.’’

The DILG official noted that from August 20 to March 20, 2021, the PNP has reported 1,503,273 violations of minimum health protocols nationwide with 671,104 or 44.6 percent violators “of not wearing face masks and face shields while 430,773 or 28.7 percent were wearing face masks but had no face shields.’’

He added that “371,102 or 24.7 percent were violations of physical distancing while the rest, 17,673 or 1.2 percent were violations of Republic Act 11332 and 12,621 or .8 percent were violations of mass gatherings.’’

“The data from the PNP validates the survey conducted by our medical experts. We really are not getting the full benefits of the utilization of face masks and face shields to prevent the spread of COVID-19 because we have let our guard down,” Malaya said.

The PNP has reported that from March 15-20, 2021, 19,628 were apprehended for violating the curfew restrictions.

Of this number, the most number of apprehensions were 5,865 or 29.89 percent by the Manila Police District (MPD) and the lowest number of apprehensions were 2,264 or 11.53 percent by the Quezon City Police District (QCPD).