DOH eyes COVID-19 tests for inbound travelers on 7th or 8th day of quarantine

Quarantined returning Filipino overseas workers wait for their flights back to their home cities around the country, at Manila’s international airport on May 28, 2020. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) will recommend COVID-19 testing for inbound travelers on the seventh or eighth day of their quarantine in the country.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Wednesday that there is evidence that the viral load for COVID-19 patients is still high until the eighth day of infection.

“Now we have true evidence to state that the viral load is still high until the seventh or the eight day that’s why we are revising again our protocol and we will be presenting to IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases) to adopt this kind of implementation,” she said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.

“Based on evidence and recommendation of our experts, the viral load is still high until the eight day, so we want to be sure that we get to be able to identify all of these travelers coming in accurately so we can isolate properly and we can break the chain of transmission,” Vergeire added.

The recommendation, she said, is still up for approval by the IATF.

Current protocols from the IATF mandates all inbound passengers, regardless of country of origin, to undergo facility-based quarantine upon arrival, then take a RT-PCR swab test on the fifth day of their quarantine.

EDV