First Day of Lockdown

(Part of an ongoing account started on March 13, 2020 of how the spread of COVID-19 in our country and our government’s response has affected our lives.)

Today is the first day of the general community quarantine. I call up Arlene to check how she is doing and get a litany of all the wrong that government is doing. I understand how she feels. She is stranded in Metro Manila for at least a month. Even if she finds a way to leave the region, she will not be able to enter Cebu City which has also announced a lockdown.

Photo taken from the MSC Cruises Fan Club
- Unofficial FB page

Arlene is one of hundreds of Filipinos whose employment on cruise ships all over the world is cut short by the pandemic. She arrives in Metro Manila from Dubai, only to find that she can no longer leave the metro because of the lockdown. Some of her co-passengers avail of the shuttle service to Clark in the hope they can leave Luzon from the airport there, only to find themselves stranded too because their home provinces have also initiated lockdowns.

She cannot understand why they are left to fend for themselves. There is no quarantine; she is expected to isolate herself in lodgings she must find herself in what was supposed to be a stopover. She cannot stay in a hotel for a month as it is too expensive, but she wants to stay in Makati where her agency’s head office is located because she wants to iron out a pay issue.

I ask her to keep my number in case she needs anything, but she assures me that she has found temporary lodgings and that she plans to wait for her cruise shipmates and pool resources so they can get decent yet affordable lodgings in the time they are all stranded in Metro Manila.

Meanwhile, Hubby realizes he must get his ingrown toe nail clipped soon if he wants to walk around without pain for the duration of the lockdown. Half expecting to be turned down, he sends a text message to book his pedicurist at a nail salon in Market! Market! at the Bonifacio Global City in Taguig. He is surprised to get an appointment since she is much sought after, given her thorough but gentle hands, and even more when he learns that the mall is open.

I go along to buy additional cleaning and food provisions at the supermarket. We are startled to see a half-empty parking lot and consequently, fewer people in the often-packed mall. We wait patiently when the security guard takes our temperature and asks us to wait while he radios to a central office controlling the number of people inside the mall. It does not take long. Hubby heads directly to the nail salon while I enter the grocery.

There are enough provisions and I feel a bit guilty enjoying the fact that I do not have to endure the long lines that are usually found at the Metro supermarket during weekends. I get the items I’ve listed, resisting the temptation to stock up further on food. Little do I know that I would regret this the next day. At Watsons, the line at the cashier is a bit long but manageable.

I check out the Metro department store and am pleased to find that it carries the embroidery thread my daughter had asked me to get, should any of the shops still be open. “Naku, all the shops are open including your beloved Dairy Queen,” I tease her via text. I get her favorite frappe nonetheless and place it carefully inside my insulated bag so it would last the ride home. It does, because there is very little traffic.

Photo borrowed from Philippine Star
FB account

After dinner, we gather in the living room to hear mass (recorded video of the 10 a.m. mass at the Manila Cathedral).  Masses have been suspended since March 14 “to avoid large gatherings of people to avert the further spread of the virus,” according to a pastoral letter from Manila Bishop Broderick Pabillo.

It does not feel right. The dogs are a distraction although they eventually settle at our feet when we refuse to pet them. The warm air makes us drowsy. I peek at hubby seated beside me and see that his eyes are closed. I try to be charitable and assume he is just deep in prayer, but realize he is really asleep when a soft snore escapes him.  I jostle him awake, which sends my daughter into a fit of giggles.

Sigh. We are so sorry to be so human, God.

Just before the Quarantine

(Part of an ongoing account started on March 13, 2020 of how the spread of COVID-19 in our country and our government’s response has affected our lives.)

We make plans to check on Nanay and her needs before the general community quarantine over Metro Manila is implemented by midnight. Trips outside the province are prohibited during the quarantine so we know that after today, we will be unable to go to her place in Antipolo City, which is located in the Province of Rizal.

However, we’ve already asked a plumber to come over and do repair work so we wait until that’s done before we leave. We set out mid-afternoon and stop by a restaurant along C5 to buy food that we can share with Nanay. The parking lot is half-empty and only a few patrons are inside. We go on the road and round a bend, only to come head to head with the giant parking lot that is the Ortigas Ave. extension.

We crawl inch by inch, not really making much headway in the traffic created by the huge number of people evidently wanting to leave the metro before the quarantine takes effect. Finally, hubby gives up and calls Nanay, apologizing that we have to turn around and head back home since we would likely get caught in Antipolo when the quarantine takes effect. She understands, as most mothers do.

Tired but still intent on catching the news, I stay up and am alarmed when my best friend calls from Cebu. Arlene, a mutual friend from abroad, is stranded in Manila.  Much as I want to immediately rush to her aid, I know I have to get the consensus of hubby and daughter, who are both in dreamland. I vow to call Arlene in the morning.

Life, as I don't know it

Photo borrowed from Heywood Hospital  

The threat of the corona virus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) first became real to me when it hit close to home or rather, the Greenhills shopping center in San Juan, Metro Manila which I was thinking of visiting to have my daughter’s drawing tablet repaired.

A 62-year-old male who frequented a Muslim prayer hall in the shopping center had contracted COVID-19 on March 5. He was the first case of local transmission in the Philippines, having no history of travel prior to contracting the disease. His wife followed suit on March 7. This convinced me that the virus had found its way to Metro Manila. It was no longer something in Wuhan, China. I remember thinking, “It’s real and it’s here in Greenhills.”

Of course, I had followed reports of Filipinos repatriated from Wuhan, China and quarantined at the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac last February, but did not think much of it because they were all eventually released after they were cleared of the disease.

But the sight of a virtually empty Greenhills shopping mall unsettled me. Then the cases of local transmission started to rise, causing President Rodrigo Duterte to formally declare a state of public health emergency in the Philippines on March 9. He also suspended all classes in public and private schools in Metro Manila from March 10 to 14, 2020.

My daughter, who initially rejoiced at the idea of not having classes, started to worry. Her school cancelled the last term tests, announcing that the students’ final grades would be based on their class standing. Like most students, she had been banking on doing well in the finals to further pull up her grades. Also, she and her friends had agreed to meet at our house after the last exam scheduled on March 13 for a Dungeons and Dragons session, which was always fun.

Nonetheless, she remained optimistic that she would see her schoolmates during the practices scheduled for their moving-up ceremony the week after. But even that did not materialize. Government’s advice to offices and institutions to refrain from holding activities that encouraged mass gatherings prompted her school to cancel the moving-up ceremony altogether.

I think this was the tipping point for me since we were now directly affected. I wondered when her grades would be released, if they were good enough for entry to the school she had chosen for senior high school, and when we could enroll her for Grade 11. The silence and the uncertainty unnerved me.

Then I saw a news report showing the cast of popular noontime show “Eat Bulaga” performing to an empty studio on March 10.  Studio management had decided not to open its doors to a live audience in an effort "to help prevent the spread of the virus and to ensure the health and safety of its talent, staff, crew, and members of its audience."

Given the fast pace of events and everything that has happened since then, I have decided to make an account of how the rapid spread of COVID-19 in our country and our government’s response has affected our lives.

This is not an attempt to document medical or technical milestones, but rather just an account of how an ordinary, middle-income family is reacting to a new way of life brought about by the lockdown.

Life, as I know it, has changed. Fast. Drastically. I am starting on March 14, 2020 hours before the general community quarantine or partial lockdown of Metro Manila announced by Duterte takes effect. (To be continued)