TWO more repatriation flights are expected to arrive in Davao City on August 6 and 7, an official said.
City Tourism Operations Office (CTOO) head Generose Tecson, who also serves as the Airport Monitoring Team head, said the repatriated Filipinos from Dubai, United Arab Emirates will arrive on August 6, and from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on August 7.
Tecson said around 350 to 400 passengers from Dubai are expected to arrive in the city via Francisco Bangoy International Airport, while 150 passengers will arrive from Kuala Lumpur.
The official said this will be the fifth and sixth batches of repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) that will arrive in the city.
In July, four batches of repatriated flights arrived in the city — a flight from Dhaka in Bangladesh, two from Dubai, and one from Kuala Lumpur.
A total of 931 individuals were catered. Of this number, 811, including 43 children (children of OFWs) are OFWs; 110, including five children, are ROFs, and 10 diplomats, arrived from Dhaka.
Tecson said passengers of the first two repatriated flights from Dhaka and Dubai already finished their quarantine, except for 14 individuals who tested positive for Covid-19. She said majority of them are asymptomatic and none of them are positive for the Delta variant.
The official said individuals who tested positive were immediately transferred to the tent city at the Francisco Bangoy International Airport (Davao International Airport) for additional 14-day mandatory isolation.
“Ang purpose nito is para mahiwalay sila sa ating locals na (Our purpose is to separate them from our locals are) positive for Covid-19,” she said.
Meanwhile, 462 passengers from Kuala Lumpur and Dubai are still waiting for their reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test results.
As part of arrival protocols, the passengers were swabbed 48 hours before the flight and must present negative RT-PCR test results under City Ordinance 0477-21, Series of 2021 or the Mandatory Testing Prior to Entry into Davao City via the Davao International Airport.
According to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), the OFWs and ROFs are required to undergo a 14-day quarantine in Davao City before proceeding to their final destinations.
In the quarantine facility, the returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) are situated on the higher floors. For instance, if the designated hotel has ten floors, only the seventh to the tenth floor shall be occupied by the ROFs.
