Two weeks shy from celebrating our second year in ‘quarantine’/ lockdown, most of the cities in the country, including Metro Manila, will be under the Alert Level 1 today, March 1, 2022,
Alert Level 1 which basically means no restrictions on who can go out, when to go out, where to go out, how many can be in one place at a time and which businesses can operate or not. The only different in this ‘new normal’ is that the minimum public health protocols and safety should still be observed.
Minimum health protocols and safety for this excitingly ‘no restriction’ period is wearing of facemask is still enforced, and that is basically what is protecting everyone from the still here COVID-19 virus. People will no longer be required to show vaccination cards, people will no longer need to fill-up those stupid contract tracing forms or even download and use those contact tracing apps. Everyone can go in and out freely. Like it was 2019!
During the last day of February, the reported number of new cases was 951 only with 50 new deaths. That is the lowest since after the Holidays, but it was in November 2021 when we reached the 400 new cases levels, that was the only time we went out freely until the OMICRON variant .
In other parts of the world like U.S., UK, South Korea and Australia, new Covid-19 cases reach 100,000 new cases a day until now.
So, these 900 plus new cases we have daily for me is really unbelievable. But I would give credit to our country’s political will to give this false hope that COVID-19 pandemic is over and we can wane out of this age of pandemic and live life normally.
The Worst-case scenario
This false pretence is motivated by politics of course because it is election season. I believe come May 2022 another lockdown will be enforced because there will be a new variant and there will be another surge of COVID-19 cases. And since we are all locked down, it is either, the election will be postponed or voting will be done like the OFWs absentee voting style! When this happens, YIKES! CHAOS! A lot will be claiming that they got cheated. The election poll will take forever and the present administration will still be the acting administration because that’s the protocol until the inauguration of the new one is held.
Should you go out or not
Gosh, go out, if you have somewhere to go to. Don’t loiter around like 2019 and people watch like you use to.
I am sure a lot of us are excited to be FREE , explore the outside world , or just outside the four corners of our prison , I mean homes.
Just be vigilant, don’t put your guard down , especially your masks and hand sanitizers.
Here is a graph of the protocols for Alert Level 1 Do’s and Don’ts
Images from Philippine Star
