Re-imposing travel ban

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana suddenly got dubbed as the “superstar for the OFWs,” or overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Lorenzana earned the unlikely tag during the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management on Emerging and Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte at Malacanang last Monday night.

The Defense Secretary gets to be involved into OFW concerns in relation to his designated task as the co-chairman of the National Task Force (NTF) in charge of implementing the government responses to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Military air and sea assets under the command of Lorenzana were deployed to pick up stranded OFWs here and abroad during the height of the COVID-19 a year ago.

Two days later, it became crystal clear what prompted the President to dub Lorenzana with a new title. As one of our guests in Kapihan sa Manila Bay, NTF chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. confirmed the NTF has again closed down our borders to stem entry of potential carriers of COVID-19 mutations from abroad due to another surge of COVID-19 cases in our country.

The much highly transmissible mutations of COVID-19 infection were reported from the so-called variants originating from the United Kingdom (UK), South Africa and Brazil as the latest recorded case in the Philippines. The NTF order came following the stiff rise of COVID-19 cases, mostly in the national capital region (NCR), a trend confirmed by Dr. Jose de Grano, president of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc. (PHAPi) who was also our guest in our weekly Zoom Webinar news forum at Kapihan sa Manila Bay last Wednesday.

As the PHAPi president, Dr. De Grano noted with relief the renewed rise of COVID-19 cases lately, however, currently affect only the hospitals located in NCR and in Regions 3 and 4 as well as the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR). But by and large, Dr. De Grano is confident the country’s hospital system from both private and government sector – composed largely from around 500 to 700 member-hospitals of the PHAPi all over the country – are not overwhelmed yet to accommodate both COVID-19 and non-COVID cases.

He urged though the DOH-run Philippine Health Insurance (PhilHealth) to pay at the soonest possible time the P6 billion outstanding reimbursements to all hospitals to them bail out from downsizing while the COVID-19 cases are rising.

Galvez confirmed the latest NTF directive re-imposing  the “temporary suspension of travel into the Philippines of foreigners and returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) who are non-overseas Filipino workers (Non-OFWs).” ROFs refer to Balikbayan Filipinos considered as “non-essential” travellers.

The President obviously prevailed upon Lorenzana to exclude OFWs from the re-imposed travel ban. According to Galvez, the government has so far repatriated from various parts of the world some 500,000 OFWs who were able to return to our homeland since the COVID-19 pandemic struck us last year.

So it appears it was private understanding between the President and Lorenzana who attended virtually the IATF meeting that night. Galvez was also virtually present during that IATF meeting while under self-quarantine following his trip from India. As the designated “vaccine czar,” Galvez flew last week to India along with a small delegation of fellow government officials to inspect the Novavax manufacturing plant of the Serum Institute of India (SSI).

Back from his trip, Galvez announced, he announced having signed a supply agreement with SSI for the procurement of 30 million doses of Covavax vaccines from Novavax. The SII is billed as the world’s largest vaccine producer. Novavax, on the other hand, is a biotech American company based in Maryland in United States (US) that has a joint vaccine project with SII to manufacture Covavax.

With the help of the Faberco Life Sciences Inc. as the SII registered local partner in the Philippines, Galvez hopes the first doses of Covavax would arrive in our country earlier than July this year as target schedule of delivery. Dr. Luningning Villa, Faberco medical director told us earlier Covavax is just awaiting the approval of the emergency authority use (EAU) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of UK. Villa who was our guest during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay last week believed the EAU approval will come before the end of this month.

While waiting for more anti-COVID vaccines to arrive in our country, Galvez reassured the public the NTF will do everything to contain the resurgence lately of COVID-19 cases, especially at the NCR. For one, Galvez cited the NTF re-imposing the one-month travel ban in the Philippines merely implements one of the government’s established “drills” of the NTF’s anti-COVID measures.

Galvez justified the NTF new travel ban as one of the measures “to stop the incursions” of the COVID-19 foreign variants in our country.

Galvez pointed to the monitoring of the latest surge of COVID-19 cases done by the Department of Health (DOH) – with the help of the University of the Philippines – Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC) and the UP National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH) – have confirmed additional cases of the COVID-19 cases in our country were caused by the new virus variants.

Of the 59 new cases of the UK variant as of March 13, Lorenzana cited 18 were attributed to ROFs; of the 32 cases of the South African variant, one is attributed to one ROF; and the lone positive case of the Brazilian variant was also attributed to another ROF.

Thus, Galvez cited, the new arrival limit would cut it from the present 4,500 to just 1,500, to include ROFs. This would take effect starting tomorrow until April 18. The NTF chief implementer hinted the limit might be raised to 2,000 and shorten the period to just 15 days given the other stringent quarantine measures now also back in place.

Galvez appeals to Balikbayan to understand the “moral obligation and most logical” move in re-imposing travel ban in our country to prevent the feared “exponential” increase anew of COVID-19 cases.