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Too early to say Chinese tourists did not help spread the virus in PH – DOH

Patricia Solis
Sep 12, 2020
2 min read

It has been eight months since the Department of Health recorded its first case of COVID-19 in the country and nearly six months of community quarantine because of the report of local transmission of the deadly virus. The Philippines currently has more than 226,000 active cases. Unfortunately, the numbers of cases and deaths are still continuously rising as days pass by. The Department of Health stated that it is too early to conclude that the Chinese citizens who visited the country did not contribute to the spread of the virus. In these past months of analyzing and tracing its transmissions, is it too early to conclude with this statement? Are the Chinese the main source of the spread of this infectious virus?

The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) sampled COVID-19 specimens. The findings include:

January to June and in this analyzation of samples, five lineages of strains of the virus were discovered.
Two of the lineage were from China, where the virus originated.
Another two lineages from Europes and one lineage of the virus strain came from other neighboring countries.

In connection with the research by RITM, the first active case of COVID-19 in the Philippines has a strain linked from China. On the other hand, the cause for the other two cases was because the patients had interacted with patient zero.

Furthermore, samples from active COVID-19 cases in March caused by the local transmission of the virus were analyzed. The research detected that it came from a different lineage of virus strain which was from neighboring countries like Singapore and India. Moreover, the researchers concluded that these cases were caused by local transmission.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire requested RITM to obtain and analyze more samples from a larger population and interpret said data accurately which can bring up misunderstandings and disturbance to people when interpreted.

Preventive measures should have been implemented even before the rise of COVID-19 in the world. The country should have been alerted with the drastic effect this virus might bring. Closing the country instantly to foreign countries severely affected the virus might have avoided the spread of the virus. Moreover, immediate contract tracing and quarantine as the first case of COVID-19 was reported being in the metro might have avoided local transmissions of the disease. As reported by the RITM, lineages of the virus strain originated from the center of the virus and other countries severely affected by it.

Nonetheless, the public should not conclude anything regarding this issue and blame people, especially the Chinese unless the RITM and health authorities have released their official findings in their study. However, as citizens of the country, we should always be cautious and alert of who we interact as we are in the middle of a pandemic. Anyone can be infected by this virus. Preventive measures should be followed as to not worsen the cases and widen the local transmission of this disease. With discipline and effort, we can say that none of us helped the spread of COVID-19 virus in the Philippines.