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MANILA, Philippines — The new and more contagious variant of COVID-19 that first emerged in the United Kingdom has been detected in the Philippines, the Department of Health (DOH) and the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) announced last night.

In a statement, the DOH and PGC said that following strengthened biosurveillance and border control efforts, the B-117 SARS-CoV-2 or the UK variant was detected in the Philippines after samples from a Filipino who arrived from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Jan. 7 “yielded positive genome sequencing results.”

The patient is a male resident of Quezon City who departed for Dubai on Dec. 27, 2020 for business purposes. He returned to the Philippines on Jan. 7 via Emirates Flight EK 332.

READ MORE:  https://aseanews.net/2021/01/14/covid-19-new-variant-new-covid-19-variant-now-in-philippines-doh/