BY JEFFREY DAMICOG
The Department of Transportation (DoTr) said they are monitoring the reduced physical distancing implemented Monday in public transportation for two weeks to see if it is working and there are no problems.
It said public transportation will revert back to the one-meter physical distancing if the reduced physical distance of .75 meters being implemented now does not work.
“In the span of two weeks we will be studying it,” said DOTr Usec. Artemio Tuazon during an interview on CNN Philippines amid criticisms over the directive of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to reduce physical distancing in public transportation.
“If there are any problems we encountered during the two-week period we will revert back to one meter,” he said.
Physical distancing in public transportation will be further reduced to .5 meters starting Sept. 28 and then .3 meters starting Oct. 12 under the IATF order.
“Now if there are no problems, we reduce to .5. Then another two weeks we study it. Again if there are no problems, then maybe we can reduce it to .3. So it will be something that will be monitored, studied, and enforced,” Tuazon said.
The DoTr Undersecretary assured that public transportation will not be overcrowded.
“We will still maintain distancing. We merely reduced it,” Tuazon said.
With the .75-meter physical distancing in place, he noted that this only translates to an additional one or two passengers in jeepneys and allowing buses to have standing passengers.
Tuazon defended the IATF’s decision to reduce physical distancing in public transportation as a way to address the difficulties of commuters in getting rides.
He said the decision was based on the recommendation of the group of medical experts led by Dr. Tony Dans as well as the study conducted by the International Union of Railways.
“They don’t think distance by itself will actually defeat the transmission of the virus,” Tuazon said.
“There are other protocols in place like the face masks, the face shields, the hand washing, the temperature checking, and the disinfecting of the public transport that actually help to prevent the transmission,” he pointed out.
Though the World Health Organization (WHO) has been recommending a physical distance of one meter, Tuazon said this recommendation was made way back in the 1980s when no pandemic occurred and did not consider other measures like the wearing face masks, face shields, and disinfection.
During the IATF meeting, Tuazon recounted that the reduced physical distancing measure was supported and recommended by the Economic Development Council and that no objections were made by the Department of Health (DoH) and the local government sector. (Jeffrey Damicog)
