The Department of Health (DOH), and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) are looking at the possibility of implementing a travel ban to and from India amid the continuous spread of Covid-19 there.
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said on Monday (April 26) in a media forum that the Inter-Agency Task Force on Covid variants is closely monitoring the Sars-CoV-2 variant first discovered in India that is said to have a high transmissibility rate.
“Dito po sa atin sa Pilipinas, we reviewed all our records, pinaaral din natin sa Philippine Genome Center. We have not detected yet this kind of variant across the 5,000 na na-sequence na po natin na mga specimen dito sa ating bansa,” Vergeire reported.
The variant known as B.1.617 was initially detected in October 2020, and has since been identified in six other countries.
“Ang mahalagang dapat matutunan sa India, hindi dapat tayo nagluluwag basta-basta, dapat ‘yan kina-calibrate natin, yung ating pandemic response, kasi nangyari sa kanila, nagpabaya, they let their guard down,” DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said.
Report from Mark Fetalco/NGS-jlo
