Emergence of new coronavirus variant in Philippines inevitable —Duque

The emergence of a new coronavirus variant in the Philippines is inevitable but the Filipinos are not defenseless against COVID-19, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Wednesday.

"It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Notwithstanding that we can also have our own variant here, that could happen in the Philippines. So, we just have to watch out for this," Duque said in an interview on CNN Philippines.

"But at the end of the day, one major intervention is always compliance and adherence to the minimum health standards. Whatever is the variant, I think what's important is for our people to understand that we are not defenseless... May laban po tayo dito," he added.

The Philippines imposed a travel ban on the United Kingdom and 19 other countries which recorded a new variant of the coronavirus. It will be in effect from December 30, 2020 to January 15, 2021.

The Health chief said there is "no evidence yet" that this new variant has already reached the country.

The Philippines has been able to "bring down and stabilize" the number of COVID-19 cases recorded daily in the past 10 months of the battle with the pandemic, according to Duque.

"Hopefully this will go down to [a] three-digit number of cases," he said.

Nevertheless, the public should not be complacent with the lower number of reported cases in previous days.

"It is during the holiday season that people are less likely to have themselves tested... we will only find this out towards the end of the first week of January, what the real numbers would look like," Duque said.

So far, a total of 471,526 COVID-19 cases had been recorded in the Philippines, of whom 439,016 recovered and 9,162 died.

There are still 23,348 active cases in the country.—AOL, GMA News