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MANILA (TO UPDATE) – Sulu province wants to suspend the return of Filipinos from Sabah after the detection of the new COVID-19 variant, its governor said on Monday.
President Rodrigo Duterte said over the weekend that the local government requested assistance after the COVID variant was reported in Sabah. Malaysia and the Philippines have claims on the territory.
Between 300,000 and 500,000 undocumented Filipinos reside in Sabah, said Governor Abdusakur Tan.
“That is what we are looking for from the national government, especially the IATF to support us in matters of measures that we consider appropriate and to intervene and negotiate with the government of Malaysia to suspend the repatriation of Filipinos, Filipinos undocumented in Sabah,” he told Headstart of the ANC. .
“We have a vast coastline that we can hardly protect, so we need government support to bring in more assets. We have a vast sea, the Sulu Sea, that extends even beyond the borders of Sabah and Sulu.”
The governor added that the province “can control travel” since all travel documents are “personally signed” by him.
“This is for the purpose of ensuring that no one enters without our authorization and they should be examined,” he said.
“For some people here in Sulu province … traveling between the 2 territories is like traveling within a territory. It is as if Sabah and Sulu were one.”
Health use c. Maria Rosario Vergeire said that one of the instructions of the Interagency Working Group on COVID-19 is to apply the same detection protocol for travelers entering the country to people crossing Sabah and Sulu.
Samples from the positive cases will be sent to the Philippine Genome Center, the Tropical Medicine Research Institute or the National Institutes of Health at the University of the Philippines to determine if it is from the new COVID variant, Vergeire told ANC Headstart. in a separate interview. .
The IATF will discuss measures against the new variant of COVID at a meeting on Monday, he said.
ANC, ANC Top, ANC Exclusives, Headstart, Sulu, Sabah, new COVID-19 strain, new COVID-19 variant, Malaysia
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