Locsin recommends travel ban on Indian subcontinent states

MANILA – Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. on Tuesday said he recommended a travel ban on visitors from the entire Indian subcontinent amid the reported “double mutant” variant of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in India.

“I have suggested to the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases) that a travel ban be imposed on all our good friends in the entire Indian subcontinent; it’s not personal; it’s for everyone’s safety for now; we’ll be able to be together again and we can recall the time when we had to be apart to live,” he said in a tweet.

The Indian subcontinent covers India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, and the island nations of Sri Lanka and Maldives.

The recommendation came as India, who earlier detected the B1617 variant, battles a surge in Covid-19 cases that continues to overwhelm its health care system.

According to the World Health Organization, the B1617 designated as a “variant of interest” has two mutations: the E484Q and the L452R.

In a virtual presser on Tuesday, Philippine Ambassador in New Delhi Ramon Bagatsing, Jr. emphasized that the Covid-19 situation in India is “very serious”.

“[I]t’s very, very serious here, we cannot underestimate this virus and definitely if other countries are stopping travel of Indians to their country, that is something that our government should seriously consider also,” he said.

Bagatsing said two Filipinos in India also succumbed to Covid-19 this week, while 20 are still undergoing treatment.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, there are at least 17,636,186 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in India as of this writing.