MANILA, Philippines — The government's pandemic task force has updated its list of "green" or low-risk territories, allowing even more vaccinated travelers to go through a shorter quarantine period of seven days upon arrival in the Philippines.
Unvaccinated travelers are typically required to undergo a 14-day quarantine in the Philippines.
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But inbound travelers from "green" territories and who are fully vaccinated only need to go through a seven-day quarantine and an RT-PCR test in a government-accredited facility on their fifth day, with their day of arrival already counted as the first day.
Several entries which were included in the original list of "green" or low-risk territories first released by the task force on June 30 were removed from the updated version. The removed territories include Burundi, Liberia, Malawi, Morrocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, the additional areas such as Azerbaijan, Barbados, Bermuda, Comoros, Curacao, Gabon, Liechtenstein, Mali, North Macedonia, and Romania were newly classified as low-risk.
The government released the list as the Department of Health confirmed local transmissions of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, against which a travel ban covering seven countries has been imposed.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente on July 1 explained that this covers fully vaccinated passengers who stayed solely in the 57 countries within the past 14 days before their arrival in the country.
Morente said the same arrivals protocol applies to passengers who were fully vaccinated in the Philippines.
Updated list of 'green' territories
- Albania
- American Samoa
- Anguilla
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Barbados
- Benin
- Bermuda
- The British Virgin Islands
- Brunei
- Burkina Faso
- Cayman Islands
- Chad
- China
- Comoros
- Cote d’ Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
- Curacao
- Dominica
- Eswatini
- Falkland Islands
- French Polynesia
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Ghana
- Greenland
- Grenada
- Hong Kong
- Iceland
- Isle of Man
- Israel
- Laos
- Liechtenstein
- Mali
- Malta
- Marshall Islands
- Mauritius
- Federated States of Micronesia
- Montserrat
- New Caledonia
- New Zealand
- Niger
- Nigeria
- North Macedonia
- Northern Mariana Islands
- Palau
- Romania
- Saba (Special Municipality of the Kingdom of Netherlands)
- Saint Barthelemy
- Saint Pierre and Miquelon
- Singapore
- Saint Eustatius
- South Korea
- Taiwan
- Togo
- Turks and Caicos Islands (UK)
- Vietnam
— Bella Perez-Rubio with a report from Kristine Joy Patag and The STAR