For Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, it is possible that the passenger from the Philippines who tested positive for the UK COVID-19 variant got the virus in Hong Kong.
“When she left, she tested negative and I think on January 2, 10 days after she arrived in Hong Kong, she tested positive. So that’s 10 days between the time she left and the time she arrived in Hong Kong where she tested positive,” Duque said in an interview on ANC.
“You can readily just speculate it’s possible she might have contracted it there,” he added, underscoring that this theory still needs to be validated.
However, the information from the Department of Health said the 30-year-old woman from Cagayan Valley underwent quarantine upon arrival in Hong Kong.
Duque insisted that the UK COVID-19 variant is still not detected in the Philippines.
“Given the results of the genomic sequencing found by the Philippine Genome Center, wala pa. Ang nakita lang nila isa the usual dominant variant which is the D614G,” he said.
However, the DOH chief admitted that he does not know if the UK COVID-19 variant is already among people who were being tested.
Duque: UK COVID-19 variant positive traveler from PH ‘possibly’ got virus in Hong Kong
“We don’t know that. It’s hard to speculate,” Duque said.
Duque reiterated that the entry of the UK COVID-19 variant in the Philippines is “not a question of if but of when.”
“Talagang pinaghahandaan natin ito. That’s why we’re ramping up our health systems capacity, isolation quarantine facilities, and of course our surveillance capacities,” he said.
“We’re trying to do everything to delay as much as we can the entry of this variant,” he added.
Hong Kong authorities reported Monday that a passenger from the Philippines tested positive for the new COVID-19 strain that originated from the UK.
According to Dr. Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Communicable Disease Branch of Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection, the passenger onboarded Philippine Airlines flight PR300 and arrived in Hong Kong on December 22.
The government has already imposed a travel ban for travelers coming from 21 countries where the new COVID-19 strain had been detected.