President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. will not be meeting the Filipino community in China due to the Covid-19 situation in that country.
Marcos will leave for China Tuesday, Jan. 3, for his first state visit there.
During the pre-departure briefing, Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Neal Imperial said there will be no meeting with the Filipino community in this trip.
"There will be no meeting between the President and the Filipino community, unfortunately, because of the situation there," Imperial said.
"You know, it’s too bad but we have to follow the Covid protocols there in China. So, there cannot be any big gatherings ‘no which is usually what the President does; when he goes overseas he meets the Filipino community in big gatherings," he added.
Meeting with the Filipino community has been a regular feature of the President's foreign trips thus far.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 28,494 new reported cases of Covid-19 in China in the last 24 hours.
From Jan. 3, 2020 to Dec. 23, 2022, there have been 10,167,676 confirmed cases of the disease in the country with over 31,000 deaths reported to WHO.