MANILA, Philippines — Over 300,000 quarantine violators have been apprehended since the enhanced community quarantine was first declared, which the government's quarantine enforcement task force says is proof of Filipinos' "defiance" which it expressed outrage towards on Tuesday.
Police Lt. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, commander of the Joint Task Force COVID Shield, said in a statement that the task force "continues to receive reports of violations of quarantine rules at the community level such as engaging in drinking sessions, holding and attending parties and other celebrations, and even gambling."
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Earlier, the JTF COVID Shield said it got these reports through "observations on social media."
According to data provided by the task force, a total of 308,859 quarantine violators were apprehended over the 147 days of quarantine since enhanced community quarantine was first hoisted on March 17. Of which, 47% (146,012) were warned; 25% (77,190) were fined while the remaining 28% were charged.
“The success and failure of our fight against COVID-19 depends on the cooperation of our kababayan. The more they defy and challenge the rules set by the government to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the more they make it difficult for our government to protect them,” said Eleazar.
“On the part of the JTF COVID Shield, we will continue to maximize what we have to strictly enforce the quarantine rules because what is at stake here is the lives of the Filipino people and the fate of our country,” he added.
The task force provides only an aggregate sum of all violators, though, while its lion's share are actually violators of motorcycle back-riding rules.
From August 1, the first day after MECQ was announced, to Sunday, the task force recorded an additional 23,660 quarantine violators.
However, 14,441 or 61% of these "violators" were cited for reckless driving, which is what the task force uses to charge motorcycle riders back-riding without the necessary barrier—the same barrier that advocates and experts alike have warned is potentially dangerous.
READ: Motorcycle barriers may have dangerous effect on aerodynamics, riders warn
Only the remaining 39% are cited with "disobedience" and "curfew violations."
Besides the exaggerated figures, it is not clear where the claim of Filipinos being defiant towards quarantine rules is founded on, as separate data from tech giants Google LLC and Apple Inc., UK-based think tank YouGov, and even local surveys from the Social Weather Stations refute this.
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Doctors: Quarantine lifting fueled public misperception
The Eleazar-led task force continues to claim, as it said in an earlier statement, that "the continuous defiance of some people to observe the minimum health safety standard protocol is seen as one of the major reasons why the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise."
With policemen themselves leading the barangay and local government personnel, Eleazar stressed in an earlier statement that this "would send a strong message to every member of the community that they should conform and adhere to the quarantine rules, or face the consequences of their complacency or hardheadedness."
But medical societies at the start of August called for another round of enhanced community quarantine over Mega Manila to give frontliners a brief respite from the daily toll of the pandemic and allow the national government to recalibrate its faulty approach to dealing with it—something that has largely gone relatively unchanged so far in the MECQ.
READ: Has pandemic response been recalibrated or is MECQ a repeat of the same policies?
"The progressive lifting of quarantine has inadvertently fueled public misperception that the pandemic is getting better. It is not," the doctors said in their open letter outlining their concerns with the government's handling of the pandemic.
Government officials have so far seemed more focused on returning to GCQ, however, while some of the concerns raised by healthcare workers have yet to be addressed.
In between the first day of June, when general community quarantine was put in place to restart the country's economy, and August 4, the first day of the second modified ECQ, the national caseload grew by 93,995 cases. The health department's tally stood at 18,638 the day the shift to GCQ was made.
Consistent with the administration's pattern of blaming "stubborn" Filipinos for the rising COVID-19 infections in the country, Eleazar in his statement added that the increase in COVID-19 cases coincides "with the increase in the number of quarantine violators accosted for defying the rules against unnecessary travels and other non-compliance to the minimum health safety standard protocols."
Just the day before, however, the National Task Force against COVID-19 said that Metro Manila was ready to revert back to general community quarantine because the number of cases per day had gone down from 6,000 to 3,000. Later that day, health officials recorded almost 7,000 additional infections.
In an earlier statement, the Coalition for People's Right to Health wrote: "A militarist handling instead of a medical approach to the pandemic wreaks fear among the people and proliferates human rights violations—while doing little, if not nothing, to curb the number of cases and spread of disease."
"The first line of defense is the public, so people need to be reminded that we need to use masks and face shields, wash hands and practice social and physical distancing, now more than ever," the medical collectives also said in their earlier manifesto.