Metro Manila (pictured), home to the Entertainment City zone of large-scale private-sector Philippine casino resorts, will be under renewed restrictions as a countermeasure to the spread of Covid-19, announced the national government. The measures – which also cover four other provinces – are to be in place from Monday (March 22) to April 4.
President Rodrigo Duterte approved a resolution by the country’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases on the new restrictions, as the country struggles to contain a new surge in Covid-19 infections.
The latest measures covering Metro Manila include a ban on non-essential travel, in a bid to prevent cases spreading to neighbouring provinces. These restrictions also ban mass gatherings and introduce limits on social events.
The government said the new curbs do not represent a new lockdown, but instead put Metro Manila and the other four provinces “within a bubble”.
Foreigners, and any Philippine nationals currently abroad and who are not classified as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), are barred from entering the country until at least April 19, the government announced last week.
Entertainment City’s casino resorts have been permitted to operate at reduced capacity during periods in Metro Manila of so-called general community quarantine. That is according to earlier statements from the country’s casino regulator, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), and from the operators in Entertainment City.
At the end August, the country’s casino regulator Pagcor confirmed to GGRAsia that some casino resorts in that country had been allowed to reopen “limited to a maximum of 30 percent capacity” and with strict health countermeasures against the coronavirus pandemic.
GGRAsia approached Pagcor asking if there had been any changes to the operating capacity of casinos in Metro Manila following the latest annoucement, but we had received no reply by the time this story went online.
