Aug 20, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Philippines, Top of the deck  
Philippine leader, President Rodrigo Duterte, has downgraded with effect from Saturday (August 21) the Covid-19 countermeasures in the National Capital Region to “modified enhanced community quarantine” from “enhanced community quarantine”, the presidential palace said in a statement late on Thursday.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque stated Metro Manila would be under the new designation from August 21 to 31, inclusive. The region encompasses Entertainment City, home to several large-scale private-sector Philippine casino resorts.
The change was on the recommendation of the country’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
GGRAsia has approached the country’s casino regulator, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), asking whether the change will enable the Entertainment City casinos to restart gaming operations.
Such business had been paused since August 6, following the previous imposition of enhanced community quarantine.
Metro Manila (pictured), Laguna, and Bataan had been placed under enhanced community quarantine, the strictest form of community quarantine, from August 6 until Friday (August 20), due to a spike in Covid-19 infections.
Mr Roque said – as cited by the official Philippine News Agency – that indoor and al fresco dine-in services, as well as personal care services such as beauty salons, beauty parlours, barber shops, and nail spas, would have to stay closed, even under the freshly-announced downgrade of quarantine.
It was reported on August 16 that a pregnant woman in the Western Visayas region of the country had been confirmed as having been infected with a so-called Lambda variant of Covid-19, a strain of the virus previously found in South America.
It was three weeks after she is thought to have contracted infection, that the Department of Health was able to confirm her as a Lambda variant case, reported a number of Philippine news outlets.
A Department of Health bulletin on Thursday on the Covid-19 situation in that nation said that 73 percent of the 1,400 intensive care unit beds available in the National Capital Region were currently in use.
It added that 60 percent of the 4,600 isolation hospital beds in that region were in use; as were 61 percent of the 1,100 ventilators that were available in the National Capital Region.
There were 14,895 new cases nationally as of Thursday’s bulletin, taking the country’s total registered since the start of the pandemic there, to just over 1.79 million.
Jun 06, 2023
May 23, 2023
Jun 08, 2023
Jun 08, 2023
Jun 08, 2023
Macau recorded 158 “gaming-related” crimes in the first three months of 2023, up 24.4 percent on the 127 identified in the prior-year period, according to the latest statistics published on...Jun 08, 2023
Gaming content and equipment maker Konami says it is...Jun 07, 2023
Casino gaming content and hardware provider Light &...Jun 06, 2023
Electronic table games (ETGs) supplier Interblock dd is...Jun 05, 2023
Random number generator (RNG) testing tools are among the...Jun 01, 2023
Alfastreet, a manufacturer of electronic gaming machines,...Jun 01, 2023
Casino equipment maker Sega Sammy Creation Inc is tweaking...Jun 01, 2023
The iGaming segment in Asia “has grown rapidly” since...May 31, 2023
Showing slot machine players – via animations on the...May 31, 2023
Macau stocks in likelihood “have been punished too much...May 31, 2023
There are foreign companies still interested in investing...May 31, 2023
Thailand could pass the necessary enabling legislation for...May 30, 2023
China will remain a key market for Asian gaming...May 30, 2023
Alejandro Tengco (pictured in a file photo), chairman and...May 30, 2023
There are “plenty of reasons” for the global gaming...May 30, 2023
Gaming equipment provider International Game Technology Plc...May 30, 2023
The Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2023 Special Edition:...May 29, 2023
Austria-based gaming equipment maker and operator Novomatic...May 25, 2023
Sports betting and online casino operating platform...May 24, 2023
The business performance in Asia of gaming content and...May 18, 2023
The organisers of Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2023...May 17, 2023
Gaming content and equipment supplier Light & Wonder...May 16, 2023
Casino equipment maker Sega Sammy Creation Inc is to...May 09, 2023
Casino slot machine and digital gaming content provider...May 05, 2023
The Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia event in Singapore is the...May 04, 2023
An adviser to a Thailand parliamentary committee mulling...(Click here for more)
”I think the gaming sector has a huge potential in coming years. The situation around the pandemic drew a lot of attention from the casino operators to the ETG segment”
Michael Hu
President for the Asia-Pacific region at gaming supplier Interblock