Travelers from countries with UK coronavirus variant cases required to undergo 14-day quarantine – Palace

December 27, 2020

President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday approved the recommendation of the Department of Health (DOH) for strict mandatory 14-day quarantine for travelers coming from countries or areas that reported to have the cases of new variant of coronavirus from United Kingdom, according to Malacanang on Sunday.

In a statement, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said the countries included were Singapore and Australia as well as Hong Kong.

Roque said the mandatory quarantine would be imposed regardless of the RT-PCR test results.

He added that travelers from countries with transmission of the new variants at the community level must also undergo quarantine.

As the first country to confirm the new strain, Roque said all positive RT-PCR specimens of travelers from UK must be forwarded to the Philippine Genome Center, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, and the University of the Philippines National Institutes of Health, for genome sequencing.

President Rodrigo Duterte ealier ordered to ban flights from UK, which supposedly would end on December 31, but was recently extended for two more weeks.

According to Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, five cases of UK coronavirus variant were found in Japan, four in Australia, two in Hong Kong, and one in Singapore. Ella Dionisio/DMS