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MANILA - Valenzuela City residents won't be allowed to set off firecrackers and hold fireworks display, as well as buy and sell those, on orders of the local government, Mayor Rex Gatchalian said Friday.

In an interview on ANC, Gatchalian said "any pyrotechnic in nature is prohibited, from selling to using and even doing public displays" in the city.

"We canceled it because we believe that we want to give our medical frontliners enough room to deal with the COVID situation. We know that there's an impending surge and we don't want to run them thin. We want them to focus on COVID and that's what their request was," he said.

The ban also aims to discourage people from converging to avoid the risk of COVID-19 transmission caused, the mayor said.

The city's Christmas traditions, like lighting of its official Christmas tree and food fiestas, did not happen this year due to the dangers posed by the pandemic, he said.

"If we did that for Christmas, might as well do it all for New Year. We have been relatively successful in avoiding convergence," Gatchalian said.

Gatchalian said majority of his fellow Metro Manila mayors "want the same thing" for New Year.

• Metro Manila mayors nagkasundo: Bawal ang firecrackers sa NCR sa holidays

Violators of the ban in the city will be slapped with a P5,000 fine, and may be imprisoned if caught with the same violation.

"Our campaign would always be, be more practical. Don't spend money on something that will burn in a couple of minutes. Just spend it wisely. Buy food for the family so that everybody can do a salo-salo," he said.

"Not only are there economic implications to buying fireworks that just burn in a couple of seconds. But there are inherent risks whenever you light something up - whether it's inhaling toxic fumes, whether it blows up in your hand."

"Bottomline, it's always safer to just stay at home, celebrate with your loved ones, buy a really nice dinner. Economically, people will have to make priorities this coming new year, so might as well start it on New Year's Eve," he said.

The ban comes as the Philippines' COVID-19 cases soared to 467,601 on Friday. Of the total infections, 9,062 have died while 430,791 others recovered.

A total of 27,748 cases are still active or under treatment, the Department of Health said.

• PH virus tally breaches 467,000 with over 1,800 new cases