‘No need yet for COVID travel controls, mandatory masking’

AMID the new wave of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Singapore, the Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said it is still unnecessary to impose any travel restriction or mandate the use of face masks again.

In a statement, the DOH said coordination with international health authorities and the close watch of the Bureau of Quarantine over points of entry nationwide are adequate safeguards as of now.

“There is no scientific basis for travel restrictions to any country because of an increase in COVID-19 cases,” said the DOH, adding that there is still no need to revive the mandatory wearing of face masks in the country.

It said standard precautions like hand washing, avoiding crowds, and choosing good airflow are enough precautions so one would not catch the virus.

The DOH issued the statement after Singapore began seeing a new COVID-19 wave and recorded rising cases of infection over the last two weeks.

Singapore data shows that there were 25,900 cases of COVID-19 recorded from May 5 to May 11, as compared to only 13,700 cases in the previous week.

In the Philippines, the DOH said COVID-19 cases and healthcare utilization rates remain to be low.

It said that for the period of

May 7 to 13, there were only 877 new COVID-19 cases reported, or an average of 125 cases per day.

The data also shows that the occupancy rate of ICU and non-ICU beds for COVID-19 patients are only at 11 percent (119/1,117) and 13 percent (1,238/9,571), respectively, as of May 12.

“All Philippine regions remain to be at low risk for COVID-19,” the DOH said.

As for new emerging COVID-19 variants and subvariants, the DOH said there is no reason to be alarmed, noting “there is no evidence now that the KP.2 and KP.3 variants are causing severe to critical COVID-19, both locally and internationally” despite the fact that these have been tagged as variants under monitoring (VUMs).