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DOH says too early to say Chinese tourists contributed to spread of COVID in PH

Julia Rigor
Sep 12, 2020
1 min read

TRAVEL. Travellingculture has changed gradually because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fear of infection has now caused many countries to speculate against chinese tourists/people travelling from China. © The Straits Time & Solis

The Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire counters the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine’s (RITM) findings of Chinese tourists spreading the first strains of COVID-19 in the Philippines last January due to possible interactions.

According to the RITM, the two main lineages of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), called Lineage A and B, came from the first three cases that carried the original strain of COVID-19 in the country.

“The local transmission of different lineages and strains may have been imported from multiple introductions of different lineages into the country,” the RITM remarked.

Conversely, Health Undersecretary Vergeire stated that it is too early to conclude that the Chinese tourists were responsible for initiating the spread of COVID-19 in the Philippines because the study was done with a small sample size and area.

“Although [the] RITM initially showed the gene sequence of the three Chinese tourists were different from the rest of the population that they have studied, again let us try to be cautious in interpreting,” Vergeire said in an online forum.

After the first three cases recorded in January came, the wide spreading of the virus started two months later on March 6, 2020.