300 more Pinoys come home amid virus crisis
THREE HUNDRED overseas Filipinos arrived from Qatar on Saturday amid a coronavirus pandemic that has sickened about 18 million and killed more than 689,000 people worldwide, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
The Filipino who arrived on Saturday included land-based workers, seafarers and returning tourists who got stranded abroad, it said in a statement on Saturday evening.
The repatriates were swab-tested and will be quarantined for 14 days at a facility approved by the Bureau of Quarantine, DFA said.
They were in addition to the 50,887 overseas Filipinos who arrived in July, bringing the total of those who have come home to 115,793 since February.
Of the total, 35,656 came from the Middle East, 6,925 from Asia, 4,943 from the Americas, 3,343 from Europe and 20 from Africa, the agency said.
“The DFA also organized 13 chartered flights this July which brought home 4,147 fellow Filipinos from Japan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, Malaysia and Vietnam,” DFA said. It said it had paid for the chartered flights, adding that it planned to bring home about 100,000 more Filipinos in the next two months.
“We continue to stand by our promise to bring home every Filipino who wants to come home,” Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Sarah Lou Y. Arriola said.
Meanwhile, DFA said 9,556 overseas Filipinos have been infected with the coronavirus, 3,313 of whom were being treated, 5,572 have recovered and 671 died.
The most number of cases came from the Middle East with 6,770, followed by Europe with 1,111, the Asia-Pacific Region with 913 and the Americas with 762, DFA said. — Charmaine A. Tadalan
