The Department of Health (DOH) said Monday it would recommend an urgent imposition of travel restrictions on countries with reported cases of the new variant of COVID-19.

In an interview on ANC program ‘Headstart’, DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire they would recommend the travel ban in their meeting with the government’s inter-agency task force on COVID-19.

“This is urgent. We all know that the decisions would be critical and should be immediate,” Vergeire said, adding that, “This recommendation will be given by the DOH where we are going to recommend that we expand the restrictions in our borders to include other countries which also have this variant identified already.”

The new COVID-19 variant is feared by health experts to be more contagious, prompting more than 50 countries to suspend all travels from the United Kingdom.

Among the Asia countries that have recorded cases of the new COVID-19 strain are Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, with South Korea reporting its first three cases on Monday.

Health authorities in South Korea have confirmed that the country has detected three cases of the new COVID-19 strain. The patients were a family of three who arrived in the country from London, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

President Rodrigo Duterte has already extended the imposition of temporary travel ban on all flights from the UK.

Duterte made the decision upon the recommendation of Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque during a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) and experts.

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