THE Department of Health (DOH) is yet to locate eight more travelers who arrived in the Philippines from South Africa before the implementation of travel restrictions on countries where the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 was detected, an official said on Monday, December 6, 2021.
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said they have so far located 80 travelers from countries that are under the red list (high-risk for Covid-19).
Of the 80, 77 were returning Filipinos and three were foreign nationals.
Vergeire said the verification of 165 more travelers is ongoing, noting that contact tracing efforts are continuous.
She said samples from 12 travelers who tested positive for coronavirus following arrival in the country from red list areas are undergoing genome sequencing.
She said results may be out at the latest by Wednesday, December 8.
"Out of all of those samples tested in the latest genome sequencing run, wala pong na-detect na Omicron variant, most of the detections were that of the Delta variant," said Vergeire.
She said in the latest genome sequencing of 629 samples, 571 or 90.78 percent were found to be Delta variant, one was positive for the Beta variant, and one for Alpha variant.
Vergeire said the country remains under minimal risk for Covid-19.
The National Government has imposed a ban on flights coming from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini and Mozambique where Omicron variant cases were detected. (SunStar Philippines)