Passenger from Manila possibly got virus variant in HK – expert

MANILA, Philippines — The female passenger from Manila who was found positive for the new variant of the COVID-19 virus when she was tested in Hong Kong could have gotten the bug there, a health expert said on Wednesday.

“Did she get it in Hong Kong? It depends on the timing,” Edsel Salvana of the health advisory technical working group to the government and the University of the Philippines Institute of Molecular Biology said in an online news briefing.

“If she had a negative test on Dec. 22, and it takes three to five days [for the virus to incubate] and appear in a positive test result, and if she had herself tested in Hong Kong on Dec. 27, it’s more likely that she got it there,” Salvana said.

But he added: “These are just speculations.”

PAL statement

Philippine Airlines (PAL) said the passenger presented a negative result before taking her flight to Hong Kong on Dec. 22.

“The presentation of a negative COVID test by arriving passengers is a requirement of the [Hong Kong] government,” PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna said.

Villaluna did not provide further details, but a source said the test was a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test done at an accredited laboratory. This test is required 72 hours before departure.

Contact tracing

“Philippine Airlines has turned over to the Philippine Bureau of Quarantine the necessary information that will enable them to carry out the contact tracing procedures on passengers of the PAL flight (PR300),” Villaluna said.

“PAL is fully cooperating with health authorities and strictly adheres to vital health and safety protocols to help ensure that air travel is safe even during the pandemic,” she added.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said two passengers who matched the Hong Kong government’s description of the positive case tested negative when they left Manila.

Vergeire said the Department of Health (DOH) had traced the two women, both 30 years old, and they presented negative test results before leaving. They have not picked up their phones since they were first contacted on Wednesday morning, she said.

The DOH has contacted the International Health Regulations of Hong Kong for more information, but has yet to get a response, she added.

Vergeire said the DOH had not been able to ascertain the nationality of the positive case, as the Hong Kong government merely said the passenger arrived on a flight from Manila.

But Hong Kong news reports, quoting local health authorities, said the woman was a Filipino domestic worker.

No variant here yet

Despite those reports, the DOH and the Philippine Genome Center said they had not yet detected the new COVID-19 variant in the country.

The government, however, on the recommendation of the DOH and the Department of Foreign Affairs, added Portugal, India, Finland, Norway, Jordan and Brazil to its list of countries on which it has imposed a travel ban to keep the variant out of the Philippines. The list formerly covered 20 countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

The government’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases also formed a technical working group to monitor and identify the occurrence of new variants of the COVID-19 virus. Vergeire heads the group.

On Wednesday, the DOH logged 1,047 additional coronavirus infections, raising the overall number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country to 480,737.

The DOH said 339 more patients had recovered, bringing the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 448,700. But the death toll rose to 9,347 with the deaths of 26 more patients.

The deaths and recoveries left the country with 22,690 active cases, of which 81.8 percent were mild, 8.5 percent asymptomatic, 0.52 percent moderate, 3.2 severe, and 6 percent critical.

—With reports from Miguel R. Camus and Jerome Aning