Duterte: Sulu Asks Government For ‘Help’ As Sabah Allegedly Detects New Strain Of COVID-19

MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte said Saturday night that the Sulu province requested the help of the national government after the apparently most contagious strain of COVID-19 was reportedly detected in Sabah.

“The Sulu provincial government has called the (Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases) for assistance after the new strain of COVID-19 was detected in Sabah, Malaysia,” Duterte said at a press conference.

Sabah is less than 29 hours by boat from the Sulu archipelago, Duterte said.

Citing a newspaper report, Duterte added that Sulu wanted to consult the country’s pandemic task force “on the best way to handle the emergency situation.”

At the time this story was published, ABS-CBN News was unable to independently confirm whether there were cases of the new COVID-19 strain in Sabah.

Duterte also allayed public fears about the spread of the new variant of the coronavirus, saying that Sulu and the national government are “equipped with the capacity and logistics to implement and operationalize safeguards and preventive measures.”

“The Sulu COVID-19 task force is asking the public not to panic and to heed warnings from official sources,” the president said.

“For our front-line partners, we intensify [the] monitoring, and we use all available materials and resources at our disposal to secure our constituents and reiterate our call to them to avoid speculation and spread false and harmful traffickers. “

The health department said earlier this week that it has not detected any new strains of the COVID-19 virus in the Philippines, with Sec. Francisco Duque III reiterating that in the same briefing on Saturday.

This led Duterte to suspend flights from the UK to the country from December 24 to December 31, to prevent the strain from entering the Philippines.

The researchers said that most of the mutations that have emerged in the coronavirus are harmful to the virus or have no effect in one way or another. But several of the mutations in B.1.1.7 appeared to potentially affect the way the virus spreads.

At the time this story was published, Japan, France, and Singapore were among those reporting the local presence of the new COVID-19 strain.