Travelers from countries with reported cases of the new COVID-19 variant that emerged in the United Kingdom (UK) must undergo a 14-day quarantine in state-run facilities in Clark, Pampanga, a Palace spokesman said Sunday.
In an interview on Dobol B sa News TV, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said this recommendation was among those approved by President Rodrigo Duterte during his meeting on Saturday with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF).
Roque said the 14-day quarantine would be mandatory, regardless of the results of their COVID-19 tests.
The countries which have reported the UK variant of the coronavirus include Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Singapore and France.
Earlier, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said one of the 79 passengers that arrived in the Philippines from the UK tested positive for COVID-19, but it was not yet known if this was the new strain.
On Sunday, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said the Philippines would not yet ban travel from other countries with the new COVID-19 strain found in the UK unless there’s community transmission there.
Beginning Dec. 24, Manila already suspended flights coming from the UK. The ban was supposed to end on Dec. 31, but the government extended it for another two weeks.
But Senator Francis Pangilinan on Sunday called on the government to immediately impose a travel ban on countries that were monitored to have the new coronavirus variant, and not wait for local transmission before doing so.
“Why do we need to wait for the new strain to scatter before the government acts?” he said, reacting to the government’s pronouncements.
The senator urged the government to take decisive action to prevent the variant from entering the Philippines, whose number of coronavirus cases is now nearing half a million.
Pangilinan said officials should have learned their lesson from Covid-19, which had already spread in some parts of the country before the government decided to impose a travel ban.
“It’s time authorities take swift action because all it takes for the new variant to spread is one person getting on a plane and landing at NAIA,” he said.
On Saturday, medical experts said they would not recommend new lockdowns and travel restrictions in reaction to the new coronavirus variant.
Dr. Marissa Alejandria, a member of the country’s COVID-19 technical advisory group, said while the mutated COVID-19 variant was easily transmittable, the mode of transmission would still be the same.
“We would like to clarify that the mode of transmission will be the same — respiratory droplets…. To impose the lockdown or travel restrictions will not be sustainable in the long run,” Alejandria said during Duterte’s press briefing on the COVID-19 variant.
Alejandria said that the mutated form of the virus is not “more virulent” or something that could cause severe symptoms, citing research.
Dr. Socorro Escalante, the country’s OIC representative to the World Health Organization, cautioned against a new set of lockdown restrictions, saying that ensuring public health interventions could help.
“The WHO recommendation for now is not to restrict travel but to ensure that our public health interventions are in place and that the country is ready to mitigate any event that the transmissibility of this new strain will come in the country,” Escalante said.
“In the past nine months, the government has already put all the necessary public health intervention and measures [in place] but we have already learned a lot of lessons,” Escalante said.
Duterte earlier said Sulu province has sought the government’s help to monitor the situation after the new strain was reported in Sabah.
But the country’s OIC representative to the World Health Organization clarified during the briefing that the strain found in Sabah wasn’t the mutated form from the United Kingdom.
In other developments:
* The Kabataan party-list on Sunday said the government must act immediately to deal with the possible entry of the new strain of coronavirus. “However, rather than proactively implementing a travel ban, the Duterte administration has chosen to become passive once again – it would wait for community transmission before acting upon it. Worse, it has already opted to cancel the pilot testing of face-to-face classes in low-risk areas,” it said in a statement.
* Health Secretary Francisco Duque III directed DOH technical teams and experts to review proposals for stricter control measures for travelers coming from countries which have reported cases of the new variant. Expert recommendations will be presented to the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) in its meeting on Dec. 28. on top of recommending strict mandatory 14-day quarantine for incoming travelers from the identified countries, the DOH with its panel of experts and WHO are also looking at the possible restriction of entry of travelers from these countries.
