The Department of Health and Foreign Affairs are deliberating the possibility of declaring a temporary ban on travelers from India over a new COVID-19 variant from India, said Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire on Monday.
“Pinag-uusapan na po namin ngayon with DFA so that we can recommend to IATF if ever we will find that cause para po talagang i-ban muna temporarily just for us to prevent further spread of [the] disease here in the country,” Vdergeire said in an interview on ANC.
(We are discussing this now with DFA so that we can recommend to IATF if ever we will find that cause to impose a temporary ban just for us to prevent further spread of disease here in the country.)
Vergeire said the new COVID-19 variant from India was first detected in October 2020.
“Up until now we can say that we still have not detected [it here] although we are still looking at our records, baka meron tayong nakita before (maybe we have detected it before),” she said.
Experts said the new COVID-19 variant in India was “double mutant” and caused the spike in COVID-19 cases in India.
Travel ban over new COVID-19 variant from India possible: DOH, DFA
Last week, India marked a new milestone in the COVID-19 pandemic after it reported 314,835 new daily cases, the highest one-day tally worldwide.
“The situation is very critical,” Dr Kirit Gadhvi, president of the Medical Association in the western city of Ahmedabad, told Reuters.
“Patients are struggling to get beds in COVID-19 hospitals. There is especially acute shortage of oxygen.”
The air force has also sent to other neighboring countries to get oxygen supply.
Many of the deaths from COVID-19 in India recently were due to a lack of oxygen.
The Delhi high court called what is happening today in India a “tsunami of disease”, where a record high of those testing positive for the disease was reported for three days in a row
“We never thought a second wave would hit us so hard,” Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the executive chairman of Biocon & Biocon Biologics, an Indian healthcare firm, wrote in the Economic Times.
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