⁍ Thousands of Filipinos crammed into a baseball stadium in Manila on Saturday, breaking social distancing rules despite coronavirus risks.

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⁍ Officials had reserved the stadium as a place to test people before transporting them back to their home provinces.

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⁍ People must wear masks in public and observe one-metre social distancing, while children and the elderly are urged to stay at home.

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– “We don’t have work and now all of our savings have dried up because of the lockdown,” says a 40-year-old man stuck in Manila after his flight to Australia was canceled. He’s one of thousands of Filipinos who’ve been affected by the country’s severe coronavirus outbreak, which has now quadrupled to 78,412 cases, with more than half of those in the capital and surrounding areas, the BBC reports. To prevent the spread of the disease, which is believed to have originated in camels, the Philippines has been imposing a number of restrictions, including a ban on mass gatherings and the wearing of masks in public. But on Saturday, thousands of people flooded a baseball stadium in Manila to be tested for the disease before being transported back to their home provinces, breaking social distancing rules, Reuters reports. Officials had planned for 7,500 people to arrive at the stadium from Friday, but were caught out when another 2,000 people who were not yet scheduled to travel headed there anyway. “Because of overflowing the number of people, we can no longer control (the situation) and the relevance of social distancing had been diminished,” says a government official. Police were deployed to urge social distancing, but people, including the elderly, children, and pregnant women, were seen in close contact with each other.