ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine) has been issued by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte as an act

of solving the CoViD-19 in the entire island of Luzon. Due to the increasing cases of CoViD-19 in Luzon,
President Duterte thought there must be something that will prevent the transmission thus coming up
with the ECQ.

The quarantine would last a month unless earlier lifted or extended when necessary. The whole idea
of this quarantine is to lessen the movement of the people which the government think will lead to no
more, if not, slower transmission of the virus. By the guidelines, classes and all school activities will be
suspended until the end of the quarantine, mass gatherings will be prohibited, and other related
guidelines that will prevent the people of transmission of the virus.

With the whole thing going on, there seems to be a problem with the idea. The government
implemented only solution with no concrete plan on what to do next to this quarantine and leading to
more problems. One example is, when it looks like they have overlooked the situation of the people
living in poverty. While being quarantined, most of them don’t have sources of income that will support
their families’ needs that’s why most of them really need financial assistance from the government as
soon as possible. Another thing is without mass testing, this will not be handled properly. If the
government’s main focus is just keeping the the people from going outside their houses, they will fail on
solving the real problem. Experts, specifically the World Health Organization, say that mass testing and
contact tracing should be the backbone and top priority of the response of the government because it
will handle those who are really infected, the frontliners who could also possibly be the carrier of the
virus and those under investigation very effectively.

I could say that with the implementation of ECQ, it would be very helpful if the whole thing was
planned carefully. If all things have been taken into consideration, there will be no issue between the
citizen and government.