The Department of Health (DOH) will recommend extending travel restrictions to all countries with a reported case of the new COVID-19 variant, Health Undersecretary and spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire said Monday.
The inter-agency task force on COVID-19 will be meeting to discuss measures the country will take against the new variant, which is supposedly more contagious.
"This is urgent. We all know that the decisions will be critical and should be immediate," Vergeire told ANC's Headstart when asked about the travel ban.
"We are going to recommend that we expand the restrictions in our borders to include the other countries which also have this variant identified already," she said.
Scientists from the United Kingdom identified the new variant of COVID-19, which appears to be more contagious and genetically distinct.
The Philippines has so far suspended flights from the UK starting December 24 until December 31.
All passengers who have been in transit to or from the said country within 14 days are also barred from the country, according to Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque.
Travelers from UK who arrived before Christmas Eve were also required to observe quarantine.
Stricter lockdown
Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said there was no need to impose a stricter lockdown as long as there would be no proof that the new strain of the coronavirus disease 2019 from the United Kingdom had entered the country.
“From all indicators of what is happening in other countries, we may just retain the old (quarantine) classification particularly in NCR (National Capital Region). We do not know yet, we will still have a discussion with the President (Rodrigo Duterte) but our proposition is to come up with measures on how to prevent the entry of the new COVID-19 variant here. For me, no need to have stricter lockdown because there is still no evidence that it [the new Covid-19 variant] has entered the country," he said in Filipino in a radio interview.
Aside from Metro Manila, the provinces of Davao del Norte, Batangas, and Lanao del Sur, and cities of Iloilo, Tacloban, Iligan, and Davao will remain under general community quarantine (GCQ) until Dec. 31.
All other places in the country are under modified GCQ, the least stringent of all quarantine classifications.
Travel guidelines
"For now, our guidelines say all those coming from countries that reported a case of the new COVID-19 variant would undergo 14 days mandatory quarantine. How many are those passengers? We may run out of quarantine facilities. Our countrymen who need to be quarantined might suffer. The facilities might be overwhelmed,” he explained.
Currently, only Filipino citizens, foreigners joining their Filipino spouses and dependents; and foreign diplomats are allowed to enter the country under existing protocols.
Upon arrival, passengers must undergo swab testing. While waiting for results, passengers must stay either in a government-designated quarantine facility or quarantine hotel.
Payment for the accommodation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) will be shouldered by the government while other travelers who are non-OFWs will pay for their own accommodation costs.
Travelers whose test positive will be transferred to designated hospitals for treatment, while those with negative results will be allowed to move out and undergo a 14-day quarantine at home or at an appropriate local monitoring facility.
Reports showed that the new coronavirus variant first identified in the UK spreads 70 percent faster.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health said that cross-border transmissions of the new COVID-19 variant from the United Kingdom would be its basis in recommending travel ban from countries reporting such infections.
In a press briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the department was monitoring the situation in these countries.
Always priority
The health and safety of the Filipino is always a priority, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said amid the ban of flights from the United Kingdom over the new variant of the novel coronavirus.
In a signing ceremony on Monday, Puyat said the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Emerging Infectious Diseases will discuss the restrictions to address the threat of the new variant entering the Philippines.
“I've always said that the health and safety is always the priority,” she added.
Puyat noted that only ‘balikbayans’ or Filipinos abroad who are returning to the country are being allowed to enter the Philippines.
According to her, the Department of Tourism was focusing now on domestic tourism, which has a significant part in the contribution of the entire tourism sector to the gross domestic product of the country.
High susceptibility
The Department of Health the speculation that children are more susceptible to the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the United Kingdom was still being studied.
Vergeire, in an interview on GMA Network’s Unang Hirit, said no sufficient evidence had been presented yet to make such a conclusion.
Vergeire noted that President Rodrigo Duterte postponed the dry run of face-to-face classes because the Philippine government had been considering children as part of the vulnerable sector.
Reports said that a member of UK government’s government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERV-TAG) said that “there is a hint that it has a higher propensity to infect children.”
“We haven’t established any sort of causality on that, but we can see it in the data,” NERV-TAG’s Neil Ferguson said.
“We will need to gather more data to see how it behaves going forward,” added Ferguson, who is also a professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at Imperial College London.
'Don't wait'
Philippine government authorities should not wait for other nations to have local transmissions of the new COVID-19 strain in order to restrict travel, a public health expert said on Monday.
The Philippines has prohibited travelers from the UK to enter the country until January 14 but only imposed a mandatory 14-day quarantine on travelers from countries that have recorded the new COVID-19 variant.
Dr. Tony Leachon, a former adviser of the National Task Force against COVID-19, cited the country's post-holiday surge and lack of vaccine.
“My personal opinion is we should not wait because the epicenter of the new variant which is the United Kingdom already has a local transmission.,” Leachon said in Tagalog in an interview on ABS-CBN's Teleradyo.
He added: “We lack vaccines, we have a surge and we have more cases than last year so we should not wait. By that time, the old and new strain may have already mixed. That would be a huge and difficult problem for us.”
Vaccines' efficacy
An expert from the DOH said the efficacy of the current vaccines against COVID-19 would most likely not be affected by a new variant of the novel coronavirus that comes from the United Kingdom.
DOH-Technical Advisory Group’s Dr. Edsel Salvana told a press briefing that in case the new variant of the virus would have an implication on a vaccine’s efficacy, it would be gradual.
Salvana said: “We still have no information, if this is effective. But this is being studied. Based on the number of mutations, most likely not.
“Once the virus becomes resistant, [the efficacy] does not become suddenly zero. You can see from 95, Pfizer becomes 85, or 70, it’s a gradual process.”
If a surveillance system is in place, Salvana said experts could anticipate this happening and tweak the vaccine to make it more effective.
Salvana said viruses mutated as the number of infections increased.
Due to this, TAG’s Dr. Anna Ong-Lim reminded the public to strictly observe minimum health protocols to avoid the development of the new variant of the virus. With PNA
