MANILA – Malacañang announced on Tuesday that the Philippines has extended the travel ban from India and nine other countries until September 5 in order to prevent and reduce the spread of Covid-19.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque released a statement after health authorities logged 22,366 new cases of Covid-19, the country’s highest-ever tally in the pandemic on Aug. 30.
“President Rodrigo Roa Duterte approved the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to extend the current travel restrictions in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia from September 1 to 5, 2021,” Roque said in a press statement.
In response to the threat posed by the more infectious Delta Covid-19 strain, which was discovered in India, the extended travel prohibition was also implemented.
“These travel restrictions form part of the pro-active measures to slow down the rising number of Covid-19 cases, stop further spread of variants, and increase the country’s existing healthcare capacity,” he added.
Despite the country reaching a new all-time high in new Covid-19 cases, President Rodrigo Duterte stated that the death toll in the Philippines is lower than that of other countries.
“Hirap ng America ngayon. Ang Europe is suffering from a maraming mas namatay. Atin hawa lang, ang patay natin hindi masyado ganun karami (America is facing difficulties. Europe is suffering from more deaths. In our case, it’s only the transmission, our deaths are not that many),” he said in a prerecorded public address.
He also mentioned that instead of implementing city-wide and province-wide community quarantine to combat the health crisis, he might introduce “localized lockdowns” across the country.
“Whether the rise in the number of cases is due to the Delta variant or not, we need to recalibrate our response. We are also evaluating whether granular or localized lockdown would work best in our current situation,” he added.
With 13,827 new infections on Tuesday, the overall number of Covid-19 infections reached 2 million.
The total number of cases in the country has risen to 1,989,857, with 145,662 active cases.
The number of deaths climbed to 33,448 as 118 more people died, while the number of recoveries increased to 1.8 million with 16,759 fresh survivors.
