‘One size fits all’ travel rules slowing economic recovery

ONE of the biggest issues that arose as soon as the government made the decision to impose an enhanced community quarantine to try to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus infection was how to safely allow Filipinos stranded outside the country to return. The rules recommended by the InterAgency Task Force for Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) for doing this, however, bring to mind the old saying “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face”: In some cases, they are clearly doing more harm than good and should be modified.

It is of course entirely proper, under the present conditions, for the government to prohibit the entry of tourists and other casual travelers, but that still leaves three categories of people for whom entry into the Philippines is a necessity: returning overseas Filipino workers ( OFWs); other Filipinos who were traveling abroad for other purposes and need to return home; and people who are traveling to the Philippines for essential business. Except for the shared need to be allowed into the Philippines, these groups of people have different circumstances that are not addressed most effectively by applying the same rules to all of them.

The latest version of those rules was promulgated on May 11 — and since a verbatim reprinting of them would take up more than the available space on this page — are summarized below:

1. All arriving international travelers must undergo a coronavirus “swab test.”

2. While awaiting the results of the test, the traveler must stay in a government quarantine facility or in an approved quarantine hotel.

3. The cost for the stay in a government facility will be covered for OFWs, but other travelers will have to shoulder their own costs. Any traveler ( OFW or otherwise) must pay their own costs for a stay in a quarantine hotel.

4. If the test result is positive, the traveler will be moved to a medical facility for appropriate treatment.

5. If the test result is negative, the traveler will be released to spend a 14- day quarantine period at home or at an “appropriate local monitoring facility.”

The waiting period for test results is currently four to five days. Although more testing capacity is being made available, the bottleneck in the Department of Health’s test validation process means that the waiting period probably will not be significantly reduced regardless of how many testing centers are opened.

For OFWs and Filipinos simply returning from overseas vacations or studying abroad, the delay is an unfortunate inconvenience, but one that can be tolerated. For Filipinos and others who are arriving for business, however, the delay is harmful — not only for them, but for the country in general. With President Rodrigo Duterte frankly admitting in his address to the nation on Tuesday night that the government will be facing a funding crisis by August if economic activity does not pick up, any business activity that can be carried out safely should be accommodated as quickly as possible.

A recommendation that was forwarded to us by a concerned reader could solve the problem without compromising public safety. Instead of undergoing a four- to five- day testing process, Filipino business people could instead be allowed, at their own expense, to submit to testing at an approved facility within 48 hours of arrival, and dispense with the 14- day follow- up quarantine requirement if the results are negative.

The rationale for this is that virtually all business travelers are already coming from places with testing and quarantine requirements at least as stringent and in most cases more so than the Philippines’, and thus present a very low risk. To further reduce that risk, other safeguards such as limiting the exception to arrivals from places with sound testing and quarantine protocols — for example, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan, among others — could be applied.

The suggested procedure still applies prudent infection control measures but at least allows people whose contributions to the economy are critically important to get to work as quickly as possible, and relieves some of the burden on the country’s overworked testing and quarantine capacity. It is a suggestion we would urge the IATF- EID to strongly consider.