Sen. Nancy Binay questioned the suspension of the quarantine restrictions for international travelers and said that relaxing the border controls will only induce the entry of possible new mutation of variants and continuing health risks, said in her statement earlier today.
“I’m not sure if the intent is to stop the spread or [if the] government has already given up on us. The spikes will definitely be inevitable,” the senator stated.
Sen. Binay also holds the Senate tourism committee which also gives her the authority to have a say on the border controls and on curbing the spread of the virus to the community, for which she also said that the country is ‘still struggling’ to control the infection driven by the Delta and Omicron variants.
“Are we supposed to draw comfort from this? Is the lifting of restrictions supposed to slow down the high transmissibility rate of new variants or, in any way, be less threatening to COVID infections?” she added.
“We don’t have adequate serological surveillance because we don’t have granular real-time data gathering systems in place. The bottomline is to learn to live with the virus and get back to as much of a normal society as possible — but not without medical safeguards, otherwise we are bordering on irresponsibility,” she said.
“It doesn’t make sense that after two years since the time two Chinese travelers were confirmed to be coronavirus carriers, we are again considering relaxing border controls while averaging 20,000 cases per day,” Binay lamented.
“Kulelat na nga tayo sa pandemic response, ngayon bibitawan pa natin ang border control,” she further adds.
As the Philippines will start to lift the quarantine restrictions by tomorrow, Tuesday, February 1, 2022, that was announced last week on Friday, this will give privileges to the foreign travelers, for traveling to the Philippines will no longer require a 10-day or 14-day hotel quarantine, but a negative RT-PCR test taken within 48 hours prior to departure from the country of origin, and other usual travel documents.
The senator further expressed her dismay by saying that the country should have learned on what has happened in the past two years, and that the country does not even have a ‘sensible surveillance because we do not have granular real-time data gathering systems in place’.
“The bottomline is to learn to live with the virus and get back to as much of a normal society as possible–but not without medical safeguards, otherwise we are bordering on irresponsibility,” she added.
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