Chinese doctors to be deployed to Philippines soon, says Ambassador Sta. Romana

Chinese doctors will soon be deployed to the Philippines to help the country stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Manila’s Ambassador to Beijing Jose Santiago Sta. Romana said Monday.

But the final details still need to be worked out, including the list of doctors and the date of arrival, Sta. Romana said in a televised briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Operations Office.

“Kasali na ‘yan sa plano, Nabanggit na rin ito ni [Foreign Affairs] Secretary [Teodoro] Locsin [Jr.] na merong medical team na hinahanda na pupunta diyan para tumulong sa atin,” the ambassador said.

Pending the arrival of Chinese doctors, Sta. Romana said there has been continuous deployment of medical supplies from China to the Philippines.

He said the medical supplies were bought by the Filipino-Chinese community.

The Chinese government earlier donated more than 100,000 test kits which the Philippines’ Research Institute for Tropical Medicine found to be at par with the test kits provided by the World Health Organization.

On March 12, President Rodrigo Duterte said he would seek the assistance of China if the COVID-19 situation in the country worsens.

He said Chinese President Xi Jinping assured in a letter of China’s readiness to help in his government’s fight against the new coronavirus, which has infected 1,418 people in the Philippines, including 71 deaths and 42 recoveries.

China has reported more than 81,000 coronavirus infections and 3,300 deaths, mostly in the city of Wuhan, where the virus is thought to have first infected people at a seafood market.

Recently, China's locally transmitted infections have fallen sharply amid lockdowns and travel restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the virus. — RSJ, GMA News