Minimize the pain.

As the enhanced community quarantine was suddenly implemented yesterday, among those who failed to report for work were nurses and other hospital staff, pharmacy employees as well as other people on the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus disease 2019. Marikina Mayor Marcelino Teodoro, whose city has about a dozen of the border checkpoints, said approximately 60 percent of the health personnel in the city's health facilities, who live in neighboring areas in Rizal, failed to report for work. He called the situation at the checkpoints a "nightmare.

" Everyone is worried about the coronavirus disease 2019, and most people are ready to fully cooperate with the government in any effort to stop the contagion. The government, however, must also do better in minimizing the misery not just of the public, but also of those tasked to enforce the COVID-19 community quarantine, now enhanced to include all of Luzon.

Last Monday the first full day of enforcement of the border checkpoints all over Metro Manila was a disaster. There were simply too few thermal scanners and personnel to take temperatures and check IDs at the 56 checkpoints, especially during the morning and evening rush hours.

Marikina, for example, lacks about 250 thermal scanners while Pasig needs at least 100 more, according to their mayors. The two cities host most of the checkpoints in eastern Metro Manila.

It got worse in the evening, after President Duterte announced, in his trademark rambling style, that the community quarantine had been "enhanced" to include the entire Luzon. As news footage showed, motorists waited in line until 3 a.

m. at several border checkpoints, such as those between Marikina and Cainta, to be able to return to their homes.

A woman on a motorcycle wailed in rage that she was so hungry but we know the administration's answer to that: no one will die of hunger in one month. Along Coastal Road, southbound evening traffic stretched all the way from MIA Road to the Las Piaas-Cavite border.

I doubt if the swamped cops and health personnel at that junction, with their few thermal scanners and minimal personal protective equipment, relished their grueling task, which exposed them to any infected person. The messy implementation of the quarantine, like the panic buying at supermarkets and pharmacies, in fact triggered the kind of crowding that promotes the easy spread of infection.

We saw this in the long lines of motorcycles, mostly with back riders...