Four out of the eight Filipino travelers who recently arrived in the Philippines from China were found to be carrying Omicron subvariants BF.7 and BA.5.2, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Friday, Jan. 13.
This was based on the result of the whole genome sequencing, said DOH Epidemiology Bureau Director Alethea De Guzman.
"Even though walo yun na nagpositive sa PCR, apat lamang yung tinatawag natin na na-assigned tayo na lineage (there were eight who tested positive in PCR, only four have what we call assigned lineage)," said De Guzman in a media forum on Friday, Jan. 13.
"So ang nakita natin, tatlo doon ay lumabas na BF.7 at ang isa ay BA.5.2 (what we found, three of them were carrying BF.7 and one was BA.5.2)," she added.
De Guzman said that these variants have also been detected in the country in the past.
"Ito ay hindi mga bagong variants. Dati na natin itong mga nadedetect. So, kung (These are not new variants. We have detected them before. So, if these are) unusual or unique, no," she said.
Meanwhile, there were no assigned lineages in the swab samples of four other travelers.
"So, bakit hindi lahat may assigned na lineages? Minsan yung pagkaka transport nadedegrade yung quality ng specimen kaya hindi natin siya ma-sequence (why not all of them have assigned lineages? Sometimes the transportation degrades the quality of the specimen so we can't sequence them)," she added.
Last Jan. 4, the DOH reported that eight Filipinos from the said east asian country tested positive for Covid-19. They arrived in the Philippines between Dec. 27, 2022 to Jan. 2, 2023.
The Philippines is currently on “heightened alert” amid the current surge of Covid-19 cases in China.