CEBU CITY, Philippines— Home quarantine or self-isolation is not yet an option for Filipino passengers arriving from China via the Mactan Cebu International Airport today, February 3, 2020.

Governor Gwendolyn Garcia said the provincial task force against the 2019 novel coronavirus, which she would form through an executive order today, would still have to convene and lay down the guidelines for home quarantine.

The governor said the mayors of the hometowns of the arriving passengers as well as the towns’ chiefs of police would also be tapped to secure the effective implementation of the home quarantine.

Garcia said that the other members of the households, who would be living with a concerned passenger, would also be briefed with the proper measures to be observed while home quarantine would be in effect.

Garcia, however, said they were not closing the possibility of home-quarantine once they would have already convened all the responsible persons who would operationalize it.

Dr. Terence Anthony Bermejo of the Bureau of Quarantine Cebu said at least 20 passengers would be expected to arrive via two Cathay Pacific and one China Easten Airlines flights from Hong Kong today.

The first batch of Filipinos, who would be flying in to Cebu, were expected to arrive around 11 a.m. earlier.

At least 10 passengers were on board the 11 a.m. arriving flight.

Two other flights with about the same number of passengers are scheduled tonight.

The governor said the passengers would be separated from the other passengers in the airport and would be initially examined for symptoms of the 2019-nCoV Acute Respiratory Disease.

Their luggage will also be disinfected while waiting to be transported to the Eversley Childs Sanitarium and General Hospital in Barangay Jagobiao in Mandaue City.

The arriving passengers will not be allowed to mingle with their relatives upon their arrival.

The Eversley Childs Sanitarium and General Hospital, which is owned by the Department of Health (DOH), has already been cleared of occupants since the first multisectoral meeting on measures against the 2019-nCoV ARD last Thursday, January 30, 2020.

Garcia said that the hospital had been cleared of patients with only doctors and hospital personnel being left to prepare it as a quarantine area especially for passengers arriving from China where the novel Coronavirus originated.

Aside from Eversley, Garcia said, they might also accommodate the future incoming Filipino passengers from China at the Capitol-owned Women’s Center in Lahug, Cebu City and the supposedly drug rehabilitation center in Pinamungajan town which the province already donated to the DOH./dbs