Cebu to quarantine for 14 days travelers from China amid nCoV alert

Cebu will quarantine for up to 14 days all airline passengers who will arrive in the province from China as a measure to prevent the entry of the novel coronavirus, Governor Gwen Garcia said on Thursday.

During a multi-agency meeting on Thursday,Garcia announced she would sign an executive order mandating the quarantine for the passengers.

“Through the Executive Order that I should sign, effective upon signing, we shall be requesting all passengers arriving from China to Cebu to be quarantined for not more than 14 days,” she said.

Garcia added that the provincial government will seek the help of concerned agencies like the Bureau of Immigration for the measure.

“Already we have identified a place, three facilities, in fact. But we shall be greatly helped by airline data on the expected number of passengers coming from China that will be arriving on a daily basis,” she said.

Anti-Novel Coronavirus Task Force is also set to be created through the EO.

Garcia said the Department of Health (DOH), together with the Bureau of Quarantine, will help the province in these efforts.

“I repeat, we don’t seek the banning of the entry of Chinese national or passengers or even Filipinos travelling to China coming to Cebu. We should not ban them,” she said.

“This is not us versus them. It is all of us together because we are all in this together,” she said.

As the meeting in Cebu was proceeding, the DOH just announced the first confirmed case of nCoV infection in the Philippines reported in National Capital Region during a press briefing. 

The DOH is monitoring at least four persons under investigation (PUIs) for suspected nCoV infection in Central Visayas, as of Thursday. —Joviland Rita/NB, GMA News