Metro Manila’s council of mayors on Tuesday recommended to the country’s pandemic decision-making body the capital region’s shift to Alert Level 1, the least restrictive alert level, Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez said.
In a text message to news outfits, Olivarez, head of the mayors’ council, said the city’s chief executives wanted Metro Manila under Alert Level starting March 1.
Olivarez said the mayors’ decision was “unanimous.”
Metro Manila is under Alert Level 2 until Feb. 28. It has 20,146 active Covid-19 cases as of Feb. 22.
Metropolitan Manila Development Authority officer in charge Romando Artes on Monday said the mayors would take into consideration each city’s risk classification, healthcare utilization rate, and the number of cases in the region before coming up with an alert level recommendation.
Metro Manila’s healthcare utilization rate stood at 22.8 percent as of Feb. 22.
Placing Metro Manila under Alert Level 1 would entail eased restrictions on mobility, including intrazonal and interzonal travel to all regardless of age and co-morbidities.
Also under Alert Level 1, all establishments, persons, or activities, are allowed to operate, work, or be undertaken at full on-site capacity provided public health standards are still followed.
Presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion welcomed the mayors’ unanimous decision.
“It is a must that we bring NCR down to Alert Level 1,” he said in a statement.
“With positivity rates in the NCR now below the levels set by the (World Health Organization), the NCR is ready,” he added.
The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases will decide on the alert levels for the first to weeks of March on Feb. 24. John Ezekiel J. Hirro