The Department of Health (DOH) today announced that they have finally found the tourist who arrived in the Philippines from South Korea’s Daegu City, where many of the infections from COVID-19 in that country have been concentrated.
The Korean national was found in a hotel in Cebu province, DOH Assistant Secretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told radio station DZMM. He is one of the 26 South Koreans who arrived in the Philippines last week, shortly before Manila implemented a travel ban on North Gyeongsang province, where Daegu City is located.
He, along with seven of his compatriots, will be placed under a 14-day quarantine in several hotels in Cebu to determine if they have been infected with the potentially deadly coronavirus. The DOH had scrambled to look for the man because he gave the wrong information to immigration authorities about his whereabouts.
Read: PH imposes travel restriction on South Korean province over COVID-19 fears
“This male South Korean, initially, when he went to Cebu, he gave that detail with our ports that he is staying in this specific hotel. So when they went there to look for him, he was not there,” Vergeire told the Manila Bulletin.
Meanwhile, 17 of the Korean arrivals have gone back to South Korea, while one was found in Pampanga and is being monitored there by the DOH’s local office. None of them are so far showing flu-like symptoms.
As of yesterday afternoon, 43 people are being monitored for possible COVID-19 infection. While not a single Filipino has tested positive in the Philippines, 86 overseas Filipino workers have been infected, most of them aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess, The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports. Three Chinese tourists have tested positive in the Philippines since the disease emerged around the beginning of the year — one died, and the other two have reportedly since recovered and returned to China.
