Fully vaccinated individuals who are close contacts of probable or confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) patients may not be required to undergo testing nor quarantine if they would be traced seven days after their last exposure.
Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque made the announcement as the Inter-agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases came out with the protocols for fully vaccinated individuals in the country.
In his statement on Sunday, July 4, Roque said fully vaccinated close contacts of probable or confirmed COVID-19 cases may undergo a shortened seven-day quarantine only if they remained asymptomatic for the given time period.
In case there was a need for reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing, this may be done not earlier than the fifth day after the date of the close contact's last exposure.
Fully vaccinated close contacts, however, may not be required to undergo testing and quarantine if they would be traced beyond the seventh day from the last exposure and remained asymptomatic.
Meanwhile, prescribed testing and isolation protocols shall be followed once the RT-PCR test yields a positive result, or if the individual becomes symptomatic.
Roque said an individual is considered to be fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the second dose of a two-dose vaccine, or two weeks after receiving a single-dose vaccine.
A fully vaccinated individual must be administered with vaccines that were issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) or Compassionate Special Permit (CSP) by the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or included in the Emergency Use Listing (EUL) of the World Health Organization (WHO).
As of June 27, the country has obtained a total of 17,455,470 COVID-19 vaccines including Sinovac (China), AstraZeneca (UK/Sweden), Sputnik V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA), and Moderna (USA). All of the said brands are two-dose vaccines.
To date, a total of 10,065,414 individuals have been vaccinated against COVID-19 while 2,527,286 people have completed their two doses.