The Health Department says that the government is currently monitoring 64 individuals coming from red list countries amid the Omicron variant threat.
The DOH said that according to the Bureau of Quarantine, the travelers arrived before the country placed the said countries on the red list.
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“For all of those travelers who have come into the country, we have about 64 individuals that are now currently being monitored by the BOQ,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergerie told CNN Philippines in an interview.
“What we did was to trace them, i-backtrace, and we endorsed them to our local governments so that they can be strictly monitored,” she added.
Vergeire continued that the travelers were allowed entry because there was no restriction back then.
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“If you remember, some of these countries were part of the green countries also and the yellow countries, so they had shorter protocols for quarantine,” she said.
The Philippines has so far imposed restrictions on South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy due to detected cases of the Omicron variant. (TDT)