Binay questions lifting of quarantine requirement for international travelers
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Nancy Binay on Monday questioned the pandemic task force's decision to suspend quarantine requirements for fully-vaccinated travelers, saying relaxed border controls will drive the increase of new variants.
This comes days after the government lifted its "green-yellow-red list" system, which is used to classify countries, territories and jurisdictions based on their COVID-19 risk levels.
"It goes without saying that relaxing border control will definitely contribute to the rise in new variants and sub-variants — not to mention the probability of severe illnesses and deaths," Binay said in an emailed statement on Monday.
"Are we supposed to draw comfort from this? Is the lifting of restrictions supposed to slow down the high transmissibility rate of new variants or, in any way, be less threatening to COVID infections?" she added.
Binay, who chairs the Senate tourism committee, said that the Philippines is "still struggling" to curb the spread of COVID-19 community infectious driven by the Delta and Omicron variants.
The sudden lifting of quarantine always comes at a high price, she said.
"We don't have adequate serological surveillance because we don't have granular real-time data gathering systems in place. The bottomline is to learn to live with the virus and get back to as much of a normal society as possible — but not without medical safeguards, otherwise we are bordering on irresponsibility," she said.
From February 1 and onwards, fully-vaccinated travelers entering the Philippines will be asked to present a negative RT-PCR taken within 48 hours before departing from their countries of origin.
They will no longer be required to observe the mandatory facility-based quarantine but will need to self-monitor for any signs or symptoms for seven days.
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles has also said that fully-vaccinated nationals from non-visa required countries will be allowed to enter the country beginning February 10.
January saw the tourism department, the Bureau of Quarantine and the Philippine National Police investigating cases of arrivals from abroad breaching quarantine. Among the people investigated were Filipinas returning from the US and skipping quarantine to party at a Makati night spot and to get a massage.
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