With the presence of the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant detected in some countries, an official of the Department of Health (DOH) on Monday stressed the need to enhance the country’s preventive measures, border control, and local health systems.
“While there are still many unknowns about this virus, we do know that it continues to mutate because transmission is ongoing. With the presence of the Omicron variant, we need to buy us time to and be ready so that we can sustain our gains,” Dr. Alethea De Guzman, DOH Epidemiology Bureau director, said in a media forum.
De Guzman also reiterated the importance of stronger border surveillance and control and compliance to the minimum public health standards (MPHS).
De Guzman also urged local government units (LGU) to actively look for cases and clusters, immediately isolate, contact trace, test and vaccinate, especially the A2 and A3 groups who are at higher risk.
While there are low number of Covid cases, De Guzman also urged the LGUs to use RT-PCR tests instead of antigen tests since there are enough supply of kits.
She reiterated that the antigen test results are not forwarded to the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) for sequencing to detect possible variants.
Possible entry
De Guzman stressed that it’s “highly likely” that the Omicron variant will eventually breach into country’s borders similar to other variants.
When asked to comment during the forum on the projection of OCTA Research fellow Dr. Guido David that Omicron may enter the country by February or March next year, De Guzman responded: “For us, we really don’t want it to enter in the country ever in the first place.”
“We are in this state that we are expecting [the variant to] enter at anytime…Second preparation, what if it will enter sooner than we expected or sooner than we want it to enter- in the next few weeks or next month. We should be prepared. Maybe we can detect it from our returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) or in our local cases,” De Guzman explained.
Measures
“As we slowly loosen our quarantine protocols, we relayed the need to look for signals that will flag the need to heighten our restrictions. Measures proposed to be in place are to buy us time to prepare our local health systems [on the possible entry of Omicron],” she said adding that as the country’s economy was reopened and with the upcoming Holiday Season, “we [have] already seen an increased mobility and reduction in MPHS adherence.”
She said that they are also anticipating an increase in arrivals of ROFs this Christmas Season, ensuring all arrivals will be properly screened, tested, and quarantined.
“We need to strengthen Door 2 of the Four Door strategy,” she said adding that Door 1 was implemented already. In Door 1 (Point of Origin) travel bans and restrictions are imposed, while Door 2 (Point of Entry) needs to implement screening, quarantine, and testing at points of entry and prevent entry/contain and mitigate cases.
Variant of concern
The first known confirmed case of Omicron was detected on a specimen collected in November in Botswana/Hong Kong/South Africa.
Formerly designated as a variant under monitoring (VUM) last November 24, 2021, it was classified as variant of concern (VOC) as of November 26, 2021 by the World Health Organization.
With 50 mutations overall, 30 of which are in the spike region, it is possible that the Omicron variant may cause increased transmissibility and immune evasion.
“Further studies are necessary to better understand the transmissibility, infectivity, and effect on vaccine efficacy of the Omicron variant,” De Guzman said.