Travellers from UK to undergo quarantine procedures even before effectivity of travel ban

Travelers from the United Kingdom who will arrive in the Philippines before the effectivity of the travel ban on December 24, Thursday, would need to undergo a 14-day quarantine in Tarlac City regardless of their COVID-19 test results, the Department of Health (DOH) said. 

“We will only allow the entry of  passengers who are already in transit to the country, provided that they arrive before 12:01 a.m. of 24 December 2020, and that they shall be required to undergo mandatory completion of the 14-day quarantine at the Athlete’s Village in New Clark City regardless of RT-PCR test results,” said DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III during an online forum on Wednesday. 
 
The Philippine government issued a temporary restriction on inbound travel from the UK beginning December 24 until December 31 following the detection of the new strain of COVID-19 in the said European country. 

READ MORE: PH suspends flights from UK
 
Duque said that the Philippine Genome Center was tasked to conduct a study regarding this new strain of COVID-19 together with the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) and the University of the Philippines- National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH).
 
“We are confident that they would be able to give us a more detailed characterization of the said new strain,” said Duque. 
 
“Ang alam lang natin higher transmission daw ito by 0.4 percent so it's a much faster strain of the virus but no evidence to show that it has increased the severity or the virulence nor it is affecting vaccine efficacy,” he added. 
 
Duque said that the new variant of the coronavirus has not yet been detected in the Philippines. 
 
“Wala. Wala po tayong ganoon. Hopefully hindi magkakaroon ,” he said. 
 
“We have witnessed what a spike in cases mean to us—the extensive lockdowns and how it has affected our families, our healthcare workers, the small businesses and large enterprises alike. We do not want that to happen again,” he added.