Philippine police deployed as coronavirus cases forced into quarantine

Members of the public, detained for roaming the streets without relevant passes amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, squat at a distance from one another as they are processed outside a police station at Quezon City in Manila on April 14, 2020.

Philippine police are being deployed to ensure people who test positive for the coronavirus and cannot self-isolate at home are taken to state-run quarantine centres, sparking warnings Wednesday of potential rights violations.
The move comes as authorities step up efforts to slow the rapid spread of the disease by increasing testing, reimposing lockdowns, and building dozens of quarantine centres to isolate patients with mild symptoms.
To clamp down on local transmission, police are accompanying health workers to the homes of people who have tested positive and taking them to government facilities if their homes are considered inadequate for self-isolation or if they live with "vulnerable" people, officials said. 
"We prefer that the asymptomatics and the mild cases voluntarily surrender and confine themselves in isolation centres," said Harry Roque, spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, defending forced quarantine as legal.
"It's a paid-for vacation in an airconditioned facility. It's not as if they are going to... the gulag and to the jails."
Interior Minister Eduardo Ano had sparked outcry on Tuesday when he said police would search for infected people and threatened imprisonment for anyone who tried to hide Covid-19 symptoms.
"House-to-house police searches have led to thousands of gruesome killings in the government's sham drug war," said local rights group Karapatan, referring to Duterte's controversial campaign against drugs.
"These searches would only intimidate patients and their families -- and what are the police going to do when patients refuse to come with them, shoot them dead?"
The National Union of Peoples' Lawyers said it would "sow fear in our communities and trample on our rights".
The police on Wednesday appeared to row back on Ano's comments, saying officers would serve as a "last resort" to get people with the virus into quarantine centres.
"We will not, on our own, knock on the doors of individual houses," Guillermo Eleazar, police deputy chief for operations, told a local radio station.
"We will accompany the town's local task force against Covid-19 led by health workers."
To handle the growing number of cases, the government plans to build 50 quarantine facilities, Public Works Secretary Mark Villar had announced Monday.
Villar said Wednesday he had tested positive for the virus.
The Philippines already has more than 8,300 quarantine centres with over 73,000 beds. The average utilisation rate is 32 percent, health department figures showed.
After imposing one of the world's longest lockdowns, the Philippines has been easing restrictions in recent weeks, fuelling a surge in new infections.
It had 57,545 confirmed cases on Tuesday, with 1,603 deaths.
Meanwhile, Duterte is enforcing partial coronavirus restrictions in the capital Manila for another two weeks, and warned that stricter curbs would be reinstated if the rise in new cases and deaths does not slow down.
The Philippines this week recorded Southeast Asia's biggest daily jump in coronavirus deaths and saw hospital occupancy grow sharply, after a tripling of infections since a tough lockdown was eased on June 1 to allow more movement and commerce.
"It was clear during our discussion that if the spread of the virus in Manila will not slow, it is possible that stricter quarantine measures would be reimposed after two weeks," presidential spokesman Roque said late on Wednesday.
Confirmed cases in the capital region have more than doubled to 29,015 since June.
Schools are to remain closed, operations of shopping malls and dine-in eateries limited, mass gatherings banned, social distancing enforced on public transport, and children and the elderly urged to stay at home.
Under tighter regulations in force from mid-March to the end of May, public transport was barred, working from home instituted where possible, and only one person per household allowed out for essential goods.
Meanwhile, Duterte eased lockdown measures in Cebu from July 16 after the central city recorded a decline in the number of confirmed cases, although it still accounted for 10 per cent of the 58,850 total infections in the country.
Many parts of Asia, the region first hit by the coronavirus that emerged in China late last year, are pausing the reopening of their economies - some after winning praise for their initial responses to the outbreak.
Navotas, a city of 250,000 in the National Capital Region surrounding Manila, will from July 16 return to lockdown after cases tripled since June, its mayor said this week.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said earlier on Wednesday the government had "successfully flattened the curve since April" because Covid-19 cases were growing slower, with the rate of doubling of infections now at 8.28 days from 4.8 days in May.