Philippines tightens border controls to curb Indian variant

MANILA: The Philippines is determined to impose stricter border controls to prevent the entry of the “double mutant” coronavirus variant that continues to ravage India, a top Malacanang Palace official said on Monday.

Harry Roque, the presidential spokesman, pointed out that a vital component of the stricter prevention measures include the ban against the entry of foreign tourist arrivals by allowing only foreigners bearing valid investor visa.

“It think whatever the quarantine classification the IATF will recommend, we will not open our borders. Tourism remains prohibited and only foreigners with investor visa will be allowed to enter,” Roque told a media briefing in Filipino.

“That call,” Roque emphasised,” will not change. Our borders will remain closed especially the countries like India and Pakistan which, just recently was the subject of an absolutely no entry policy.”

The IATF stands for the Inter-agency Task Force forthemanagementofemerginginfectiousdiseases which imposed a travel ban to and from India from April 29 to May 14 due to the COVID-19 “atack” on India, considered one of the worst in the world.

Later, the government extended the ban to cover four other South Asian nations — Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladeh and Nepal — as a precautionary measure against the entry the deadly Indian “double mutant” variant.

Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist of the World Health Organisation (WHO), earlier warned in an interview with Agence France Presse that the COVID-19 variant spreading in India is more contagious and may be dodging vaccine protections, contributing to the country’s explosive outbreak.

“The epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate it’s an extremely spreading variant,” Swaminathan, an Indian pediatrician and clinical scientist, said, adding the variant was first detected in India last October and was clearly contributing to the catastrophe unfolding in the country. On Monday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported that the national tally on confirmed COVID-19 infections totalled 1,108,826 from 6,846 new cases. It added the death toll hit 18,562 from 90 new fatalities while the recoveries soared to 1,030,367 from 8,193 new survivors.