The DOH urged the other passengers who boarded the Philippine Airlines flight number PR 0427 on December 1 and Oman Air with flight number WY 843 on November 30 to monitor their health status and immediately contact the agency or their local government if they start showing COVID-19 symptoms.
The government confirmed the index cases of Omicron variant on Wednesday from the test results of the two inbound travelers.
DOH denounced criticisms they took too long to detect the Omicron cases, claiming that they urged laboratories and local government units to promptly submit samples for genome sequencing.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 16) — The Department of Health is considering only eight passengers as the close contacts of the two Omicron cases detected in the country.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire on Thursday said that for flights, only those seated in close proximity to the patient are deemed as close contacts.
“We have to count properly kung ilang araw ang lumipas (how many days have passed) to detect it. I don’t think the 15 days’ count is late,” Vergeire said.
She said the returning overseas Filipino who arrived from Japan was seated in business class and only had one co-passenger in the secluded part of the plane. The contact presented a negative test result after five days of quarantine upon arrival in the Philippines.
The other Omicron case, the Nigerian national who came from Nigeria, was seated at the back of the plane and only had seven “epidemiologic close contacts.” All seven showed negative swab test results after completing their five-day facility-based quarantine, the DOH said.
The health official assured that even if the other passengers in the two flights aren’t deemed close contacts, they pose very little risk to their community since they all tested negative before they were allowed to leave quarantine.
“Lahat ng sumakay sa flight na ‘yan were quarantined when they came here in the country,” she said in a media briefing. “Hindi po natin kailangan i-quarantine lahat kung 200 man ang nakasakay diyan para i-test dahil sila ay nag-test nang negative. Meron silang pre-departure na negative test at na-quarantine nang limang araw at negatibo pa rin sila.”
[Translation: Everyone on that flight was quarantined upon arrival. We don’t need to quarantine all of them even if there were 200 passengers there or test them again because they already tested negative. They had a negative pre-departure test result and they tested negative again after five days of quarantine.]
