Around 4,600 Filipinos in Qatar have sig­ni­fied their in­ten­tions to be repatriated due to the im­pact of the COVID-19 (coro­n­avirus dis­ease) pandemic, Philip­pine Am­bas­sador to Doha Alan Tim­bayan said on Mon­day.

Speak­ing at a Lag­ing Handa brief­ing, Tim­bayan said they are al­ready co­or­di­nat­ing with both Qatar Air­ways and Philippine Air­lines to fly home the Filipinos, many of whom have lost their jobs fol­low­ing the COVID19 out­break.

“What the em­bassy can do is line them up for up­com­ing flights,” he said, not­ing they will pri­or­i­tize those al­ready with air tick­ets even as they ne­go­ti­ate with the Qatari gov­ern­ment to as­sist in the repa­tri­a­tion of the oth­ers.

“The em­bassy stands ready to repa­tri­ate our na­tion­als and ad­dress their clamor,” Tim­bayan added.

For the last three months, he said the em­bassy was able to safely repa­tri­ate a to­tal of 912 Filipinos from Doha.

Dur­ing the same in­ter­view, the Philip­pine en­voy said they have so far recorded 15 con­firmed cases of COVID-19 among Filipinos in Qatar.

They have also repa­tri­ated five re­mains, three of whom virus ca­su­al­ties.

COVID-19 on­line track­ing plat­form Worl­dome­ter shows Qatar hav­ing a to­tal of 103,598 con­firmed coro­n­avirus cases, with 99,743 re­cov­er­ies and 147 deaths.

Tim­bayan at­trib­uted the low mor­tal­ity rate in Qatar to early de­tec­tion and fo­cus on con­tact trac­ing and test­ing.