For a month now, all the 846 Bureau of Immigration (BI) personnel assigned at international airports nationwide are free of the Covid-19 virus.

In a report to Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente, BI port operations division (POD) chief Carlos Capulong said that there has been no report of any personnel infected by the disease since February 22.
Capulong said that as a result of the continued zero Covid-19 cases among BI frontliners, the bureau has been able to render better services to the traveling public.
He recalled that at the height of the Omicron surge last January, hundreds of immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) contracted the virus, sharply depleting the number personnel at the premiere port.
Capulong, however, reported that as the BI braced for the reopening of the country’s borders to foreign leisure travelers last Feb. 10, the number of personnel at the airports dwindled.
“Thanks to the high vaccination rate among our port personnel, we were able to beat the virus in time for the reopening,” he said.
Presently, Capulong said the BI is operating at full capacity amid the continuing increase in the number of international travelers that arrive and depart daily.
“We are now posting an average volume of 9,000 to 10,000 arriving passengers daily, compared to around 5,000 before Feb. 10,” he added.
There are a total of 846 immigration officers and job order employes assigned at the BI-POD, 622 of whom are reporting for duty at the NAIA. The rest are assigned in the other ports such as Mactan, Clark and Davao.