Philippines welcomes back foreign travelers after two years

Manila, Feb. 10 (BNA): The Philippines on Thursday lifted a nearly two-year ban on foreign travelers in a life-saving move for the tourism and related industries as the omicron-fueled rise wanes.

Foreign travelers from 157 countries with visa-free arrangements with the Philippines who have been fully vaccinated and tested negative for the virus will be welcomed and no longer required to quarantine on arrival. The government also ended the risk rating system that bars travelers from the worst-affected countries.

“We will start the next chapter on the road to recovery,” Tourism Minister Berna Romulo Boyat said. She added that reopening borders would restore jobs and generate revenue across businesses and communities associated with tourism, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The Philippines has imposed one of the world’s longest lockdowns and stricter police quarantine restrictions to quell a pandemic that has triggered the worst economic recession since the 1940s and pushed unemployment and hunger to record levels.

More than a million Filipinos lost their jobs in tourism companies and destinations in the first year of the pandemic alone, according to government statistics. Tourist destinations, including popular beach resorts and tropical islands, are like ghost towns at the height of pandemic lockdowns, and a volcanic eruption and hurricanes have exacerbated the toll.

The reopening was scheduled for December 1, but was postponed due to a highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus spread.

Less than a thousand new cases were added per day over the Christmas holidays, when large crowds of shoppers returned to malls and restaurants despite ongoing government warnings. The subsequent increase peaked above 39,000 infections in a single day in mid-January, but has since subsided. Health officials reported about 3,600 infections on Wednesday, with 69 deaths, and declared the entire archipelago, with the exception of one southern region, to be at “low to moderate risk.”

More than 60 million of the nearly 110 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and 8.2 million have received booster doses in a campaign hampered by vaccine shortages and public hesitation.

President Rodrigo Duterte warned Filipinos in televised remarks on Monday that “we are not done with the hump” and urged the unvaccinated to get vaccinated soon.

HF