The Bureau of Immigration (BI) announced that they would be implementing the extended travel ban from passengers coming from 10 countries.
In an advisory, BI Commissioner Jaime Morente stated that, in compliance with a resolution from the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID), the travel ban set for passengers coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia had been extended beginning Monday, August 16 until August 31.
In the said restriction, aliens coming from the 10 countries and those who have been there 14 days before their arrival in the Philippines shall temporarily be covered by the travel ban.
“We have circulated the resolution to the airlines and other stakeholders,” said Morente. “Airlines have been instructed not to board those coming from the said countries,” he added.
BI Port Operations Division Chief Atty. Carlos Capulong clarified that arriving Filipinos, under repatriation programs, may be allowed entry but shall be referred to the airport’s One-Stop Shop to undergo an absolute 14-day facility-based quarantine, apart from securing a negative RT-PCR result.
BI ready to implement extension of travel ban to 10 countries
On the other hand, passengers who transited or had a mere layover in the 10 countries are not covered by the extended ban.
Meanwhile, a total of 14,749 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the Philippines in conjunction with the detection of the first case of Lambda variant in the country, the Department of Health (DOH) said this Sunday.
The more than 14,700 new cases are the second-highest extra cases in the country since the pandemic began. In addition, there were 3 laboratories that failed to submit data.
As a result, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country rose to 1,741,616, of which 102,748 were active cases or still ill.
According to the DOH, 270 more people died, the 5th highest number recorded in 1 day. This is also the third consecutive day that more than 200 new people have died.
In total, 30,340 people have died of COVID-19 in the Philippines.
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