Night curfew to be extended in Manila

The Philippines will extend a night curfew in Manila amid a tightening of restrictions to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, a government official said yesterday.Metropolitan Manila, already subject to a six hour curfew from 10pm (1400GMT), will bring forward that curfew by two hours to 8pm (1200 GMT), said Benjamin Abalos, chair of the region’s governing body.“This will stop the virus for the meantime. What’s important is our hospitals don’t get full,” Abalos told a briefing. Authorities have deployed police personnel to quarantine checkpoints in the capital region, where inbound and outbound travel will be restricted.Home to more than 13mn people, the region will be locked down from August 6 to 20.Infections in the Philippines exceeded 8,000 a day from Friday to yesterday.Sunday’s recorded tally of 8,735 infections was the highest since May 28.In the central province of Cebu, the number of cases has overwhelmed healthcare facilities, city councillor David Tumulak told local media.A surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the Delta variant has been rattling parts of Asia, including countries which had been relatively successful at containing the virus.Just 200 cases of the Delta variant had been detected in the community, of which 17 were still active, Philippines’ health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said, although genome testing capacity in the Southeast Asian country is limited.Strict quarantine curbs could help cap the number of active Covid-19 cases to around 25,000 by the end of September, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said.