BI ready to impose tighter restrictions on travelers from China

(INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE)

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration (BI) on Sunday said that its officers at the different airports and seaports are ready to implement possible travel restrictions for passengers  from China in light of the surge of COVID-19 infections there.

BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco said they will wait for the instructions of the Department of Health (DOH), the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Office of the President regarding possible travel restrictions.

“While we have not received any directive yet about it, we are ready at any time to implement any such measures that the government deems appropriate to prevent another surge in the Philippines,” Tansingco said in a statement.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the BI implemented country-specific travel bans to prevent the entry of certain coronavirus variants.

The BI also reported that only 30,002 Chinese tourists have entered the country in 2022, accounting for 0.48 percent of the BI’s total recorded arrivals of more than 6.1 million travelers last year.

“Chinese nationals used to take the second highest spot in the number of arrivals in the country, next to South Koreans. But during the pandemic, due to travel bans both here and in their home country, the number has drastically dropped,” Tansingco said.

Currently, the government only requires unvaccinated or foreign travelers who are not fully vaccinated to present a negative pre-departure antigen or RT-PCR test results before travel or upon arrival.

There are already calls for the government to implement additional restrictions after the Omicron sub-variant behind China’s current surge as detected in the Philippines.

READ: Omicron strain behind China surge now in PH

The DOH said four cases of the Omicron subvariant BF.7 were detected in the country, based on the genome sequencing conducted by the Philippine Genome Center.

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