MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte is not discounting the possibility of declaring a stricter community quarantine if cases of the new coronavirus variant discovered in the United Kingdom skyrocket in the Philippines.
“Putting the country under a lockdown will depend on the severity in number,” Duterte said in his public address on Saturday. “Kasi ‘pag marami na [ang cases with the new variant] and we do not have the antidote how to kill those variants, we have a problem there.”
Officials present during the meeting have discussed the stricter, more proactive implementation of measures such as border control, passenger surveillance and observation of mandatory quarantine protocols along with minimum health standards.
Among the initial steps the government has taken days before the said Cabinet meeting was a temporary suspension of all flights from the UK until year-end.
Duterte also asked the Department of Health and the Department of Science and Technology to create a new task force that would focus on the new strain.
A new strain of COVID-19, which was allegedly more infectious, has been detected in the UK and has already been reported in other neighboring countries like Malaysia./PN
