Malacañang is eyeing to ban flights from India to prevent the possible entry of the so-called double-mutant Covid-19 variant, which was first reported in the South Asian country.
The Department of Health (DOH), meanwhile, said that it is set to come out with a recommendation on possible travel restrictions on travelers from New Delhi.
In an online press briefing, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the measure is now being studied by concerned government agencies.
Currently, he said, there is no direct flight between Philippines and India.
On Monday, the DOH and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said the government is now considering imposing a travel ban on India as a precautionary measure against the new variant, B1617.
Some countries including New Zealand, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and the United States already issued advisories or restricted flights coming from India.
Earlier this month, India started reporting over 200,000 cases of Covid-19 per day amid the spread of B1617 in its communities.
Following the surge, India now has the second most number of Covid-19 cases with 16.96 million cases after the United States with 32.08 million, Roque said citing data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
Several new Covid-19 variants, which were first reported in the United Kingdom and South Africa, were already detected in the country.
Some medical experts the said variants and the lax compliance of the public to minimum health standards contributed to spike in the number of Covid-19 cases in the country last month.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) on Covid variants is already studying the variant detected in India.
“We already had an initial talks with the Department of Foreign Affairs and they are just waiting for the recommendation of the Department of Health, together with our experts,” Vergeire said in Filipino in an online forum.
Vergeire said that the India variant or the B1617 variant has been detected in October last year “in other countries.”
“Here in the Philippines, we reviewed our records and we even let our Philippine Genome Center study this. We have not detected yet this kind of variant across the 5,000 specimens that we have sequenced here in our country,” Vergeire said in Filipino.
“So we will give information as soon as the recommendations are out from our experts and the DOH will recommend it to IATF,” she added.
The India variant, carries two mutations: E484Q and L452R.
Experts said that the E484Q mutation is similar to E484K, a mutation found in the United Kingdom (lineage B117) and South Africa (B1351) variants.
On the other hand, the L452R mutation has been found in fast spreading variants in California (B1427 and B1429).
Having these two mutations, the E484Q and L452R are said to be more infectious, and may even evade antibodies.
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