DUBAI: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has given his verbal approval to an interagency task force’s recommendation to ease the country’s mandatory outdoor mask-wearing mandate. Health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, who is also officer-in-charge of the department, said during Wednesday’s briefing that the president would issue an executive order regarding the new policy, but did not say when such order would be issued. Marcos is now in Singapore for a state visit and is expected to arrive back in the Philippines on Wednesday night. But Vergeire said the proposed policy would not cover senior citizens or immunocompromised individuals since they were the ones worst affected by serious COVID-19. “We want to emphasize on the confidence of booster vaccinations which made COVID-19 cases manageable,” Vergeire said, explaining the rationale for the proposed policy. The health official also said a pilot study would be made by the task force and experts regarding indoor mask-wearing in selected areas to determine the health sector’s capacity to handle the lifting of such restrictions. The eventual lifting for the mandatory mask mandate would be piloted towards the last quarter of 2022, if the situation improves with the COVID-19 booster vaccination coverage, Vergeire said. Philippine health officials have scheduled Sept. 26 to Sept. 29 as national booster week for COVID-19 vaccinations. The country’s COVID-19 vaccination data shows only 18.1 million of the 72.6 million fully vaccinated Filipinos have received their booster shots. “There has been a slow uptake in the first booster shot, so we want a progressive increase in the target as days go by. For the pilot [study] in the indoor mask wearing, that is part of the expert study on what would be the safe level [of booster vaccination] that we have to achieve so we can lift the restrictions on mask wearing indoors,” Vergeire explained.