FILE PHOTO Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explains a point during the DOH press briefing. Screengrab from livestream
MANILA, Philippines — Government authorities have already located five of the seven travelers who recently arrived in the Philippines from South Africa, the Department of Health (DOH) said Friday.
“We have already located another five, so we are just trying to locate two of these travelers,” DOH Undersecretary and spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire told reporters in a Viber message.
In an earlier interview with CNN Philippines’ The Source, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said four of the seven travelers had been located.
“We already have actually four ROFs (returning overseas Filipinos) who have been finally located. Two are undergoing facility-based quarantine with pending RT-PCR results. One is in-home quarantine, however, a negative RT-PCR test result. One has completed his 14-day quarantine and has been discharged,” said Duque.
Duque said the three other travelers who have yet to be located are sea-based overseas Filipino workers with local addresses in Mimaropa (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, and Palawan) and in Northern Mindanao.
“All had negative results based on the submission to the COVID-19 Document Repository System,” he added.
The government has temporarily banned inbound flights from South Africa and several other countries from November 28 to December 15 to prevent the entry of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.
There were originally eight missing travelers from South Africa who arrived in the Philippines before the start of the travel ban.
The DOH earlier said they provided wrong or incomplete details on their personal information sheets while others were unresponsive, making it hard for authorities to locate them.
One of the eight travelers was located by the DOH last December 8.
The eight travelers were among the 253 individuals who arrived in the Philippines from South Africa between November 15 to 29.