(Eagle News) — The Philippines is not just on the lookout for the highly infectious B.1.1.7 variant of the COVID-19 virus, but also for two other variants as well — the South African variant, and another recent variant that was reported in Malaysia.
This was according to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire in a virtual press briefing of the Department of Health.
“Sa ngayon may tatlong variant tayong binabantayan. Ito po yung sa UK na type na variant, ito po yung sa South Africa na variant, and then there was this identified variant, dito naman sa Malaysia,” she said on Friday, Jan. 8.
But Vergeire said that this does not necessarily mean that these variants are more virulent than other COVID-19 strains. Still, she said that the UK variant has been known to be up to 70 percent more infectious than previous strains.
The DOH official also confirmed that the Philippine Genome Center is continuing its genome sequencing of the COVID-19 samples collected in the country.
While the PGC had earlier said that it had not yet detected the UK virus strain, Vergeire said that this is still no time to be complacent as other COVID-19 swab samples are continued to be tested for genome sequence.
The PGC is also testing virus samples from Visayas and Mindanao.
“We are appropriating funds to the Philippine Genome Center, so that we could sustain this,” she said.
Vergeire said that there is a continuing bio-surveillance of the COVID-19 virus genome sequencing.
The DOH has also started the contact tracing of the family and contacts of the overseas Filipina worker (OFW) who had been earlier tagged by Hong Kong as having been tested positive for the UK virus variant.
The government has also started contact tracing of all passengers in the PR300 flight of the Philippine Airlines that the 30-year old OFW had taken to fly back to Hong Kong.
“Based on the report provided by the Hong Kong International Health Regulations National Focal Point and our Centers for Health Development, the case is a 30-year old female from Cagayan Valley Region who left the region last December 17, 2020. On December 18, 2020, she arrived in NCR and underwent quarantine as per their workplace protocol. A day after, on December 19, 2020, she was tested using RT-PCR which yielded a negative result,” the DOH said in an earlier statement.
(with a video report from Madelyn Villar Moratillo, Eagle News Service)
