Despite the high vaccination rate and low COVID-19 cases, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is still not included in the Philippines’ “green list.”
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Friday the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has approved its updated list of countries in green, yellow, and red travel categories for November 1 to 15.
Based on the said lists, the UAE remains under the yellow list.
If the UAE will be moved to the “green list”, it means fully vaccinated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) will no longer have to undergo facility-based quarantine if they present a negative PCR test result.
However, since the UAE remains in the “yellow list”, Filipinos from the Middle East country entering the Philippines still have to undergo facility-based quarantine.
OFWs have been urging the Philippine government to place the UAE under the “green list” category as new COVID-19 cases in the Middle East country continue to dip.
OFWs in the UAE pointed out that not only are COVID-19 cases dropping in the country, but vaccination rates are also among the highest in the world.
“Bakit yellow list pa rin ang UAE? Nasa below [100] cases na lang daily dito at almost fully vaccinated na lahat,” one OFW said in a comment to a The Filipino Times story.
Recently, the UAE placed 3rd ‘best countries to be in’ during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest Bloomberg COVID-19 resilience ranking.
The country had an overall resiliency score of 74.6 percent in the report released Wednesday. Its 97.3 percent vaccination coverage enables the government to allow 398 travel vaccinated routes.
The ranking report, which measured 53 economies to see which places were most resilient to the pandemic.
