Health experts advised the government to still enforce strict quarantine rules for returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) due to emergence of new variants of COVID-19.
They made the remarks in response to the recommendation of Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to shorten the quarantine period on returning OFWs.
“Quarantine should be strictly enforced because whether or not testing is done for as long as quarantine can be imposed, then we continue to keep our border safe,” Department of Health Technical Advisory Group (DOH TAG) member Dr. Anna Ong-Lim said on Wednesday during a meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte.
Experts preferred to keep the 14-day quarantine since the incubation period of the virus is five to 14 days.
“May tinatawag tayong phase na kahit wala pang symptom, puwede na siyang makahawa kaya that is the basis po for the 14 days,” said Dr. Marissa Alejandria, another DOH TAG member. She added that the most infectious is the first week.
For his part, molecular epidemiologist Dr. Edsel Salvana proposed testing at a later time since new data revealed people infected with COVID-19 testing positive only on the seventh day.
“Testing, even on the fifth day, will still not pick up everyone. So, it is either we test on the seventh day, or we completely do away with the testing but make sure that we quarantine everybody until the 10th day,” he said.
Philippine Genome Center Executive Director, Dr. Cynthia Palmes-Saloma recommended that the government should veer away from testing returning OFWs upon arrival since it often yields false-negative results.
Meanwhile, the health experts concurred that quarantine can be safely relaxed to ten days provided that the returning OFWs stay asymptomatic and monitoring is strictly implemented.
“The quarantine has already, you know, it really has an impact. But what our proposed solution is actually there is data that we can shorten quarantine from 14 days to 10 days provided that the person remains asymptomatic during that whole time,” Salvana said.
