Palace lauds experts for 'early' detection of Omicron cases

Malacañang on Wednesday lauded health authorities over what it considers as early detection of Omicron variant cases in the Philippines. 

"The Office of the President has been informed that two cases of the Omicron [coronavirus] variant have now been detected in the Philippines. We laud our health experts, particularly the Department of Health, the University of the Philippines – Philippine Genome Center and the University of the Philippines – National Institutes of Health for their early detection of these two cases," acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said.

"At present, active case finding and contact-tracing are being conducted to determine the health condition of co-passengers of the said confirmed cases," he added.

According to Nograles, the early detection forms part of the government's Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate (PDITR) strategy.

"We assure our people that we will closely monitor developments of the two cases in light of existing protocols," he said.

"We continue to remind the public not to let their guard down, to religiously observe minimum public health standards, and call upon all those unvaccinated to get their jabs as soon as possible," he added.

Earlier, the Health department said that the two cases of Omicron variant involves  a returning overseas Filipino who arrived from Japan on December 1 via Philippine Airlines flight number PR 0427, and a Nigerian who arrived from Nigeria on November 30 via Oman Air with flight number WY 843.

This means that the detection happened two weeks after the travelers' arrival in the country.

The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the government's policy-making body for the pandemic response, has placed the entire country under Alert Level 2 until the end of the year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under Alert Level 2 -- the second lowest in the new alert level system for COVID-19 -- certain establishments and activities are allowed at 50% indoor capacity for fully vaccinated adults (and minors, even if unvaccinated), and 70% capacity outdoors. 

On the other hand, the Health department had said that at least 42 million Filipinos are already fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but this is still far from the government target of fully vaccinating 54 million Filipinos by yearend. —LBG, GMA News