11th day of the community quarantine due to the corona virus COVID-19 and the official count is 600 official cases thoughout the country. The Philippines have not spiked yet. This is not yet the full blown curve everyone is predicting. Countries like China, Italy, Spain and USA are seeing numbers spikes. With 100 million citizens the Philippines isn't seeing the big numbers yet. The cases are mostly in Metro Manila. The cases are linked to travel or contact with persons who have traveled outside the country. Which means locally originated cases are rare.
Experts talk of flattening the curve and it might just work. China's Wuhan region where the outbreak originated reports no new cases and have set a date to reopen the province from its lock down. The Philippines closed all public transportation. All jeepneys, buses, trains, planes and ships are closed for a month. The lock down extends beyond Easter celebration, an important Catholic if not Christian day.
There have been blunders like a Senate public hearing done before the quarantine had a speaker who tested positive afterwards. That speaker infected at least two senators now. The whole Senate building was quarantine and disinfected. This lead to national security implications because most of those persons under investigations of having the virus are cabinet level staffers. There's a case of one senator who accompanied his pregnant wife to the hospital. He exposed those medical frontliners to the virus and broke quarantine protocols. There are 9 doctors among the 36 mortalities from the corona virus as of today. The frontliners have to be protected so they can continue to serve us all.
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