President Duterte wants strict enforcement of health protocols for returning OFWs
President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on Wednesday, April 21, said he wants to maintain strict enforcement of health protocols for returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) despite calls to loosen up the existing health guidelines.
“There
is no compromise here. I am not ready for a compromise about --- lalo na
ngayon. Iyong ibang sakit siguro, puwede pa ‘yong mga rabies-rabies diyan,” he
said in a public address on government response on the coronavirus pandemic.
“Pero
ito, eh talagang as I have said, it’s a ‘dapo dito, dapo doon.’ And then we
have the exponential problem now of how to take care of the Philippines.”
President
Duterte presided over a meeting with Cabinet secretaries and the Department of
Health Technical Advisory Group (DOH TAG) on COVID-19 after OFWs appealed for a
more relaxed guidelines on mandatory quarantine particularly for those who
tested negative for COVID-19, noting its emotional and financial burden.
The
President said Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III is “raising the alarm,” and
stressed that the long mandatory quarantine period for returning OFWs in hotels
has put too much strain on government funds allocated for them.
“So
nakikita niya na lumiliit na ‘yong ano pera. He’s raising the alarm, actually.
He’s raising the alarm of the possibility of having no more funds to take care
of this kind of situation that we are in now,” said the President.
Apart
from economic burden, the labor chief said spending almost two weeks in
isolation was causing emotional stress on OFWs who were eager to be with their
families and loved ones after years of working overseas.
Citing
data from the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Infectious Diseases
(IATF-EID), National Task Force Against COVID-19 and coronavirus testing
centers, Bello said the positivity rate of returning OFWs was only 2.07 percent
in 2020 and 1.5 percent in 2021 and may justify tweaking the current
guidelines.
“Kaya
po kami nakikiusap sana, Mr. President, na kung maaari we go back to the
original protocol noon na pagdating nung ano nung ating mga OFWs, swab agad
sila. Then, they are quarantined for five days while waiting for the result of
the PCR test. Eh kapag negative sila, then they can be transported to their
final destination,” he said.
Meanwhile,
experts from the Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 said enforcing strict
quarantine protocols on returning OFWs is crucial not just in preventing new
infections, but also on safeguarding the country’s borders to keep new and more
infectious COVID-19 variants from entering the country.
Dr.
Edsel Maurice SalvaΓ±a, one of the health experts, said enforcing a 14-day
mandatory quarantine in facilities proved effective in preventing new
infections, noting that the Philippines didn’t notice a surge of coronavirus
cases during holiday season because strict quarantine guidelines were in place.
In
February this year, the DOH shifted to imposing a five-day facility quarantine
with RT-PCR testing on the fifth day, and allowed OFWs to complete 14 days
quarantine at home or in local government unit (LGU) facilities.
According
to SalvaΓ±a, this new protocol is disadvantageous in cases where individuals who
possibly got infected during the flight may only test positive for the virus on
the seventh day. The risk of infection is high if home quarantine set-up is not
supervised by LGUs, he said.
SalvaΓ±a
said the TAG is proposing two options. The first option would be for returning
OFWs to complete a strict 10-day isolation in quarantine facilities. Once they
have completed the 10-day quarantine, they may be released, provided they are
asymptomatic. Testing on the seventh day is optional.
For
the second option, if there is not enough funds for quarantine facilities,
individuals may complete isolation period in home quarantine set-ups or in
temporary treatment and monitoring facilities, with selective testing on the
seventh day.
“So
our proposed solution po kasi is that the testing, even on the 5th day, will
still not pick up everyone. So it is either we test on the seventh day or we
completely do away with the testing but make sure that we quarantine everybody
until the 10th day,” he explained.
“And
this can be done in facility, but again it is very expensive or we can do this
at home as long as the LGUs can supervise strictly.”
He underscored, however, that quarantine protocols and isolation periods have to be taken seriously considering the high risk of transmission even from a single infected individual.
The DOH has recorded 9,227 new coronavirus infections on April 21, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 962,307 with 829, 608 recoveries and 16,265 deaths. PND
