Gov’t won’t issue yet travel ban for mainland Chinese tourists

During the “Question Hour” at the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda asked if the government is considering to temporarily ban the entry of Chinese tourists while the virus is not yet contained in China. (PIA file photo)

MANILA — Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Wednesday said the government may consider banning tourists from mainland China as a possible option but is not yet inclined to issue such a ban “at this very moment” amid the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) threat.

During the “Question Hour” at the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda asked if the government is considering to temporarily ban the entry of Chinese tourists while the virus is not yet contained in China.

Duque, in response, said while it is a possible option, he warned against the “repercussions” if the Philippines only imposes a travel ban against Chinese tourists when there are other countries with confirmed cases of the 2019-nCoV.

“Certainly, that’s one of the possible options that we are looking at but not at this very moment. The reason being is we have to be very careful of the possible repercussions of doing this in light of the fact that the confirmed cases are not limited to China but now in fact in several countries,” Duque said.

“If we do this then the concerned country, China, in this case, might question why we are not doing the same for all the other countries that have reported confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus so it’s a very tricky and difficult issue,” he added.

Legarda argued that it would be “prudent to be proactive” and consider implementing a ban since the Philippines is a heavily-populated country and the government has limited capacity to handle such a health crisis.

“I just value too much the health of the Filipino people. We do not have the resources nor perhaps the medical know-how,” Legarda said.

Duque, however, assured that the Department of Health has “scaled up” its response to the public health threat.

“We’ve leveled up across the spectrum of the health system that is to respond to the event even when the coronavirus enters the country,” Duque said.

“Let me assure you that we will always bear in mind the very well-meaning recommendation that you have so eloquently articulated. We will always consider this in the next task-force meetings,” he added.