WITH record setting coronavirus disease (COVID-19) numbers being set in India, the Department of Health (DOH) yesterday it is considering a travel ban to the second most populous country in the world.
In a virtual press briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said they are now in talks with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) regarding the possibility of imposing travel restrictions to India.
“We already had initial discussions with the DFA. They are just waiting for our recommendations,” said Vergeire, adding: “We will give the information as soon as recommendations are out from experts and our recommendations are submitted to the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).”
There is no direct flight between the Philippines and India.
For the moment, the health official said the IATF on COVID variants is already looking into the Indian variant of the COVID-19 virus.
Vergeire said the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) has yet to detect such a variant in the country.
“We have not detected yet this variant across the 5,000 specimens sequenced by the PGC,” she said.
On Saturday, India set a new global record of reporting the most number of COVID-19 cases in a day with 349,691.
It is already the fourth straight day of record-setting numbers in India that has left the country’s healthcare system overwhelmed.
India has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world with 16,960,172 as of April 26. It has recorded 192,199 deaths. — With Jocelyn Montemayor
