A health expert warned "it must be just a matter of time" before the new strain of COVID-19 named Omicron will enter the country

This was emphasized by Edsel Salvaña, an infectious diseases expert and a member of Department of Health Technical Advisory Group in a Palace briefing on Monday.

"It must be just a matter of time before it enters but if we are able to slow down it buys us time to strengthen our systems," he said.

In a television interview on Monday morning, NTF COVID-19 Chief implementer and vaccine czar Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr. said amid the threat of the Omicron variant, the Department of Health (DOH) ordered to scale up the preparations for COVID-19 response.

"We are preparing. What we did during the surge of Delta, we have an inventory of hospitals, personnel, treatment facilities and treatment facilities. These are now being prepared by the DOH and the DOH already has a directive to scale up the preparation of pandemic response," he said.

Salvana said the importance of boosting the vaccination and reinforcement of the minimum public health standard is vital as the Omicron variant is considered by the World Health Organization as a new variant of concern.

"The reinforcement of our minimum public health standard is a must especially in the face of the unknown. We do not yet know the clinical behavior of this, so it's better to be safe rather than sorry," he said.

"We need to carefully study this variant for us to determine if this is just as severe as Delta, or less severe and we are also not yet sure if it is more contagious. There are vaccine effectiveness studies that are ongoing and we expect that some of these data will come out in the next couple of weeks," he added. Robina Asido/DMS