40 Filipinos in Hubei Want to Go Home

By Ma. Reina Leanne Tolentino, TMT

About 40 Filipinos from Hubei province in China are seeking repatriation, Undersecretary Ernesto Abella of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Monday.

Last week the DFA called for the voluntary repatriation of Filipinos in Hubei amid health concerns over the 2019 novel coronavirus acute respiratory disease (2019-nCoV ARD) outbreak.

“About 40 Filipinos have already requested to be repatriated. The expected goal is to be able to fetch them within the week,” Abella said in a press briefing.

None of the 295,047 Filipinos in China were confirmed to be infected by the virus, he added.

There are 300 Filipinos in Hubei, 150 of them in Wuhan, where the nCoV epidemic originated.

The Foreign Affairs department said it intends to fly home the first batch of Filipinos this week “subject to China’s rules on disease containment, including immigration clearances, quarantine process, among others.”

Also on Monday, Philippine Ambassador to China Jose Santiago Sta. Romana said the Philippine government was coordinating with Chinese authorities on arrangements to repatriate Filipinos in Wuhan.

The Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong has advised Filipinos to take necessary precautions such as using masks and washing hands thoroughly to prevent contracting nCoV.

They were also advised to “avoid large crowds and gatherings and avoid interaction with persons exhibiting symptoms.”

Community organizations were also advised to postpone public events to help reduce the risk of infection.

Meanwhile, President Rodrigo Duterte has approved a ban on travelers arriving from China and its special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macao.

The ban does not cover Filipino citizens and holders of permanent resident visas issued by the Philippine government, but they must be quarantined for 14 days.

The government was considering Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija province as a mass quarantine area and Secretary Martin Andanar of the President Communications Operations Office confirmed this Monday.

“Ang sinabi po ni Secretary Duque (Secretary Duque said) they’re considering Fort Magsaysay kasi nga sa laki ng facility at pwedeng i-quarantine doon kahit na ilang daan o libong pasyente (because the facility is huge and thousands of patients can be quarantined there). Ten thousand ‘yung capacity [of] Fort Magsaysay,” said Andanar, referring to Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd.

There is still no quarantine area suggested in Visayas and Mindanao, he added.

Celia Carlos, director of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, said in the interagency meeting on Friday, the plan was for a team from the Department of Health, Bureau of Quarantine, Bureau of Immigration and the DFA “to visit the prospective facilities” which included Fort Magsaysay.

“I projected the decision tool earlier in my presentation. And there’s a part there where if personnel returning from China have no symptoms, no fever, no respiratory symptoms, just a history of travel, they need to do self-monitoring at home. So, they stay at home, preferably separated from the rest of the household. If they can stay in a separate room, that’s much better,” Carlos said.

She advised Filipinos arriving from China to wear masks for about 14 days.

“But if they develop symptoms, they’re advised to go to a facility which can evaluate them,” she said.

Overseas Filipino workers on vacation in the Philippines would not be allowed to leave for China, Hong Kong or Macao because of the travel ban, Dana Sandoval, Immigration spokesman, said in the press briefing.

She added that about 300 Chinese were stranded at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport “because most of the airlines have canceled their flights already to and from the different parts of China.”

Sandoval said the Chinese Embassy in Manila “pledged to send an aircraft to fetch their citizens.”

Carlos said there are different ways of protecting oneself from contracting the virus, including the washing of hands, avoiding close contact with anyone with flu-like symptoms or colds and avoiding unprotected contact with live, wild or farm animals.

Carlos added that a mask should be worn “if we have respiratory symptoms such as cough and difficulty of breathing; if we are providing care to individuals with respiratory symptoms; and if you are a health worker and attending to individuals with respiratory symptoms.”

Since there is no community transmission of the novel coronavirus in the Philippines, “we are not recommending its use for the general public who do not have respiratory symptoms,” she said.

With a reports from BERNADETTE E. TAMAYO

Source: www.manilatimes.net