Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddyboy Locsin Junior is pushing for a travel ban on India as the South Asian country continues to record a high number of COVID-19 cases.
“I have suggested to the IATF that a travel ban be imposed on all our good friends in the entire Indian subcontinent; it’s not personal; it’s for everyone’s safety for now; we’ll be able to be together again and we can recall the time when we had to be apart to live,” Locsin said in a tweet.
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Health Secretary Francisco Duque said that the Philippine government has yet to impose a travel ban to and from India, as the so-called double-mutant COVID-19 variant found in the South Asian country is not yet considered a “variant of concern”.
“The Philippine Genome Center has not reported to the IATF whether this has evolved to become a variant of concern. This is still considered a variant under investigation,” Duque said.
“We’ll take this up in the IATF (meeting) — the matter of returning OFWs who might be coming from India,” he added.
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“There’s no ban on our OFWs because the policy on returning OFWs upon the directive of the President, they must be allowed to travel back home,” Duque said.
There are currently about 1,200 OFWs in India according to the latest data from OWWA. (TDT)
