MALACANANG has assured the public that the country has enough testing facilities to screen travelers arriving from countries with confirmed cases of new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) variants.
Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. made the assurance after the government approved a second testing requirement for incoming passengers to curb any spread of the viral illness.
“The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) has resolved that incoming passengers shall be tested upon arrival and shall be quarantined until the result of the subsequent test administered on the fifth day is released,” Roque said in a statement.
“Having said this, we assure everyone that the government would find ways and means to have enough testing facilities that would be used or tapped to strictly comply with this resolution,” he added.
The Philippines, which recently reported its first case of the new Covid-19 variant first detected in the United Kingdom (UK), so far has 193 testing laboratories.
More than seven million persons have been tested with a cumulative positivity rate of 8.1 percent.
To date, the country recorded 509,887 Covid-19 cases, with 467,720 recoveries and 10,136 deaths.
On Friday, Roque announced that the IATF, in its Resolution 95 approved on Thursday, allowed the conduct of repeat coronavirus tests for inbound passengers five days after arrival in the country.
He said the mandatory completion of the 14-day facility-based quarantine for arrivals would be replaced with testing the passengers upon arrival then another test during their fifth day of quarantine.