Gov’t plans to ease pandemic border controls

Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, the officer in charge of the Department of Health (File photo by NOY MORCOSO / INQUIRER.net)

MANILA, Philippines — The government’s pandemic task force is set to discuss next month further easing of COVID-19 policies, this time on border controls, in response to the order of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to further open the economy.

Maria Rosario Vergeire, the officer in charge of the Department of Health (DOH), on Tuesday said new policies and recommendations to be presented by the DOH in the next Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) meeting in the next two weeks are border restrictions as well as protocols on testing and isolation.

“During the first IATF [meeting], we have agreed… that we will have our technical working group [study] the border restrictions in the country,” said Vergeire at a press briefing.

“They will see if, based on safety protocols, some restrictions could be further eased. So that has been ordered to the technical working group, and we’ll give them maybe another two weeks, and then we can reconvene,” she added.

The agenda of the next IATF meeting, she said, was based on the presidential directive to “open more sectors” of the economy, which entails “rescinding or amending” Executive Order No. 168.

Current guidelines on entry, testing, and quarantine of Filipinos and foreigners entering the country are stipulated under IATF Resolution No. 168, which took effect on May 26 this year.

Vergeire also noted that the government is now looking to improve the One Health Pass, following complaints from travelers that they are being inconvenienced by this screening system. Visitors and Filipino nationals entering the country are required to present their One Health Pass.

Pandemic still not over

But while the DOH, which chairs the IATF, is “aligned with the directives of the President,” Vergeire said revising pandemic measures should not compromise the safety of the population.

She pointed out that the pandemic is still not over, saying that the World Health Organization has the sole authority to pronounce and assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.

According to DOH data, the uptrend in cases in Metro Manila continued over the past week, while marginal increases were seen in the so-called “Plus” areas, or provinces in the peripheries of the capital region, namely Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal. The rest of the areas were either plateauing or on a downtrend.

The rapidly spreading Omicron BA.5 remains the dominant COVID-19 strain, accounting for 75.4 percent of samples that turned out positive from the genome sequencing run from July 17 to Sept. 11.

Pandemic monitoring group OCTA Research had noted that positivity rates in Metro Manila and five other provinces in Luzon have climbed over the past week.

The daily average of COVID-19 deaths dipped to just three this month compared to an average of 17 fatalities per day in August, Vergeire said.

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