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Duterte to allow OFWs to return to China when situation is safe, stable

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Duterte to allow OFWs to return to China when situation is safe, stable
Arriving passengers wearing protective masks wait for their luggage at the international airport in Manila on February 3, 2020.
AFP / Ted Aljibe

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte will decide on the proposal to allow Filipino workers to return to China, Hong Kong, Macau and other declared areas when the situation is stable.

The president has declared a temporary travel ban to China and its special administrative region amid the novel coronavirus acute respiratory disease (2019-nCoV ARD) threat.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said the government will conduct daily assessments on the situation in China.

"We will assess it day by day. The president will decide if he sees that it is stable and safe to lift the ban for Filipino workers who want to go back and work in Hong Kong or China," Nograles told reporters Wednesday.

The Cabinet official added that the government is concerned on the health and safety of overseas Filipino workers, as well as their source of livelihood.

The daily assessments would be conducted to see whether the situation in China is worsening or normalizing.

"We realize the need for them (OFWs) to start work immediately. We realize the concern about their jobs but we have to balance that also with public health, public safety," Nograles said.

The labor department earlier assured OFWs affected by the travel ban to China and its special administrative regions that they would receive financial assistance from the government.

Acting Labor Secretary Renato Ebarle earlier announced that the Overseas Welfare Administration has been ordered to provide P10,000 cash assistance, accommodation and transportation to each stranded OFW.

As of Wednesday, China's National Health Commission confirmed that infections in the novel coronavirus outbreak has reached 24,324.

There have been 65 new deaths from the virus, bringing the national toll to 490. — Patricia Lourdes Viray 

KARLO NOGRALES

NCOV ARD

NOVEL CORONAVIRUS

OVERSEAS FILIPINO WORKERS

TRAVEL BAN

As It Happens
LATEST UPDATE: October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.

October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.

Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.

The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP

August 18, 2023 - 4:25pm

The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown. 

The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday. 

So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP

August 11, 2023 - 7:07pm

The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".

The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP

June 24, 2023 - 11:50am

The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.

In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.

Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP 

June 15, 2023 - 5:42pm

Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.

The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".

But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.

In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.

He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".

Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP

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