President Rodrigo Duterte has yet to decide on whether he will grant the appeal to revise the quarantine protocols for returning Filipinos amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In his ‘Talk to the Nation’ on Wednesday, Duterte met with labor chief Silvestre Bello and health experts to discuss the appeal.
“I’m quite not comfortable with the relaxation in requirements that’s being brought about now,” Duterte said.
“There is no compromise here. So I won’t compromise. So just an off-the-cuff statement before we make the final decision: I cannot, I am not ready for a compromise — especially now,” he added.
Bello, who was first given the floor by Duterte, explained that he had been receiving “300 to 500” messages from OFWs who complained of the 14-day quarantine period upon their arrival in the Philippines.
Bello also cited the low infection rate among arriving OFWs and the cost of long quarantine protocols.
“That’s why we are appealing that we go back to the original protocol in which they get swabbed upon arrival and then they quarantine for 5 days then get released when they have a negative result,”Bello said.
Medical experts however explained the need for such measures. They told Bello that it takes three to five days for a person with COVID-19 to test positive on an RT-PCR test. Thus, if they were tested immediately upon arrival at the airport, the test might not catch their COVID-19 infection yet.
Experts offer a compromise on removing the testing requirements as long as they quarantine for 10-14 days.
“Testing can be something that we can forego if we can implement the 10 days, and whatever savings we generate because we don’t test, we can put it in the quarantine program,” said infectious diseases expert Dr. Anna Ong-Lim.
“It’s a good compromise in the sense that we reduce the duration of the period of quarantine with minimal effect of the number of infections that we may miss out as long as they remain asymptomatic and they will complete the quarantine period in the LGU,” Dr. Marissa Alejandria added.
