Toni Gonzaga urges people to be thankful as many Filipinos suffer during lockdown

MANILA, Philippines – Celebrity mom Toni Gonzaga has urged Filipinos who are in the comfort of their houses to be grateful as others are living in difficulty due to travel and work restrictions brought by the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).

Gonzaga said during an online interview on Wednesday that the first thing that people should do is to pray and be thankful for being given another day to live — which some people do not have the luxury of, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think the first thing that we should do pagdilat ng mga mata natin is to say ‘thank you’, to say a prayer of thank you,” the actress told with ABS-CBN’s Magandang Buhay.

“Kasi maraming mga kababayan tayo na hindi ganito ang sitwasyon, tayo maswerte tayo na nandito tayo sa loob ng ating mga tahanan, may mga tao na ang tahanan nila sa ilalim ng tulay, ang tahanan nila sa gilid ng kalsada, ‘di ba, so if we make it a habit to be thankful […] then good blessings would come to us,” she added.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of high-profile celebrities have either donated or started donation drives for frontliners, medical practitioners, and those severely-affected by the lockdown.

After the national government was forced to place an ECQ over Luzon and other areas due to rising COVID-19 cases, work except for essential services was suspended.

However, this has left workers who rely on daily earnings, and whose jobs cannot adjust to a work-from-home scheme without any income through the lockdown.  While the government has implemented a social amelioration program (SAP) to assist at least 18 million Filipinos, a lot still have sought for assistance.

As of now, the administration has not decided whether the ECQ will be extended past its April 30 deadline.  The Department of Health said that there are now 6,710 patients infected with the coronavirus, of which 446 have died and 693 have recovered.

Worldwide, over 2.57 million individuals have been infected, while 177,256 have died from the disease and 680,330 have recovered from it.