By: Margaret Padilla
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President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been advised to make mask use optional in outdoor areas, according to a statement issued by Malacañang on Wednesday.
The president reportedly gave the proposal his “verbal approval” in a phone conversation with Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos, as per PhilStar News, but Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles clarified that this is still not a policy.
Angeles stated that the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases suggested: “liberalize the mask-wearing mandate and make mask-wearing outdoors voluntary across the country.”
“This will be optional in open spaces or uncrowded outdoor areas with good ventilation, provided that senior citizens and those who are immunocompromised are highly encouraged to continue wearing masks,” Angeles explained.
She anticipated that a pilot test of the full lifting of the mask mandate could take place in the year’s final quarter if the nation’s implementation of COVID-19 boosters improves.
Meanwhile, the recommendation needs to be formalized in an executive order, as said by Maria Rosario Vergeire, the Department of Health’s officer in charge in a press briefing.
“This has to be placed in this kind of legal instrument before it becomes a policy. What we are doing right now is initially informing the public,” she said.
Vergeire said that the exact locations that would be considered to be open spaces are still subject to discussion, and local governments may be tasked with determining based on any guidelines issued.
She noted that the IATF’s recommendation to remove the outdoor mask requirement was supported by the government’s “confidence in our vaccines,” which she attributed to maintaining a level of COVID-19 cases “stable and manageable.”