The Philippines yesterday extended its ban on all travellers from more than 30 countries and territories where a more contagious coronavirus variant has been detected.
The ban, which originally was due to run till yesterday, will now remain in force until Jan 31.
It includes travellers from Singapore, the United States, Britain, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, South Korea and China, including Hong Kong.
As at press time, no decision had been made to ban travellers from the United Arab Emirates, where a Filipino - who has since returned to the Philippines - contracted the new variant while in Dubai.
"(President Rodrigo Duterte) will be the one to declare (a ban on travellers from UAE), if it happens," Mr Harry Roque, the president's spokesman, told online news site Rappler.
The Philippines has moved to tighten its borders in an effort to contain the spread of this new variant of the virus. The variant - officially known as VUI-202012/01, or lineage B117 - is believed to be 70 per cent more transmissible.
First detected in Britain in late September, it has spread to at least 45 countries and territories. But it is not thought to be more deadly or to cause more severe illness.
With more than 496,000 infections and 9,876 deaths, the Philippines has the second-highest number of Covid-19 cases and casualties in South-east Asia, after Indonesia.
On Wednesday, the Health Ministry said it had found the British variant in a 29-year-old real estate agent living in Quezon City in the capital region who went to Dubai for business from Dec 27 to Jan 7. He tested positive a day after arriving back in the Philippines from Dubai. He had travelled there with his girlfriend, who tested negative but was being tested again.
Health experts in the Philippines warned that the new variant could raise the country's total coronavirus caseload 15 times.
Dr John Wong of health research institution Epimetrics said: "With our current reproduction rate of 1.1, 20,000 cases at the beginning of the month will be about 32,000 at the end of the month. But if the variant takes over, the 20,000 cases can become almost 300,000 cases by the end of the month."
The Health Ministry has, for now, ruled out another sweeping lockdown. It has instead advised local governments to step up enforcement of current measures such as wearing masks while out in public.
So far this month, the country's caseload has been rising faster than last month's. The Octa Research Group, based at the University of the Philippines, had noticed a "clear upward trend" in cases, with the coronavirus reproductive rate in Metro Manila rising above the generally accepted safe level of 1.
Health officials earlier said daily cases would probably stay above 1,000, with an expected post-holiday surge yet to be recorded.
