Coronavirus: 300 Chinese stuck in Philippine airports after Manila’s travel ban on Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China

Three hundred Chinese passengers have been stranded at airports in the Philippines following Manila’s decision on Sunday to restrict travel to and from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

The travellers were stranded because airlines had cancelled their flights to China, said the Immigration Department spokeswoman Dana Sandoval, and not because the Philippines was preventing them from leaving.

The Philippines is no longer accepting any traveller arriving from any of the three areas – including those transiting through – apart from foreigners with permanent resident visas for the Philippines and returning Filipinos. It is also preventing all Filipinos, except those with dual nationality, from leaving for those areas.

Foreign nationals in the Philippines are still allowed to leave for mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau, if they can find a flight.

Sandoval said the Chinese embassy was now making arrangements to repatriate the 300 Chinese who were stranded.

The news came as the Philippine government revised its number of recorded ‘suspected coronavirus cases’ to 80, with Chinese patients accounting for nearly all the cases, according to Health Secretary Francisco Duque. Just two of these cases so far have been confirmed; a man who died on Saturday and a woman who remains under observation. 10 of the 80 cases, including a second man who died, have since proved negative. Sixty-seven Chinese are in isolation in hospitals, awaiting test results.

Some of the Chinese travellers stranded at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport said they “totally understood” the ban, though others were frustrated, saying they had no access to food or water. The airport frequently features on lists of the world’s worst airports, partly due to its lack of dining options.