The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not have the authority to comment publicly, said Hu Ling, 45, and Lee Seung Hyun, 38, had not been arrested initially but “invited for investigation” and were found to be carrying “legitimate visas” – although whether these allowed them to treat patients, the sources could not say.

Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said on Thursday that the pair had been placed on an “alert list” to prevent them from leaving the country “and ensure their presence while they are undergoing criminal and administrative investigation”.

Philippine police raid illegal hospital for Chinese Covid-19 patients

A probe by the Justice Department’s investigative arm and the Immigration Bureau of “clandestine medical clinics catering mostly to foreign nationals” that were “operating without proper authority” had been ordered by Guevarra personally, he told reporters on Thursday.

This follows the arrest on Tuesday of two Chinese nationals claiming to be doctors in the heart of Makati, the Philippines’ financial capital.

Colonel Oscar Jacildo, police chief of Makati City, said in a press briefing that the pair – who were unable to produce their original passports and identified themselves as David Lai, 49, and 41-year-old Bruce Liao, or Liao Songhua – were charged with practising medicine without a licence, dispensing unapproved medications and violating a provision of the recent Bayanihan to Heal as One Act that mandates the reporting of “notifiable and infectious disease”.

Complaints about hospital waste products repeatedly clogging up the building’s drains had been filed by its maintenance provider as early as April, Jacildo said, so to find out what was going on, the police sent in a “Chinese asset” who pretended to be sick. He said officers found four Chinese patients – three men and one woman – exhibiting coronavirus symptoms when they raided the five-bed Goldstar Medical Clinic and Pharmacy in Makati.

The unit containing the illegal clinic had been leased out since January 7 for the sizeable sum of 122,000 pesos (US$2,406) per month. Inside, police found “boxes and boxes of coronavirus test kits, Chinese medicine and some Viagra”, as well as a computer which had the records of “patients they have already treated [dating back to] as early as March”, Jacildo said.

On May 20, Clark Development Corporation, which operates Clark Freeport, ordered all of Fontana closed. This prompted Fontana Development Corporation to issue a statement on May 23 saying it had “no involvement or any participation in the alleged illegal health facility that was discovered recently by authorities in one of the villas at the Fontana Leisure Park”.

Simon Wu, assistant general manager of Fontana Development Corporation, said the villa was “under the exclusive control of Shidaikeji Technology Corporation, a long-time locator of the Clark Freeport Zone … Fontana has no control over the property or the operations therein [and has] zero operations at present” because of the pandemic.

“Shidaikeji has been using the villa to attend to their own employees’ needs and that they are not operating as a Covid-19 clinic,” he said, adding that “the two foreign individuals who were arrested in the vicinity were released on the same day with no charges filed”.

Wu also disclosed that on May 22, some 490 persons working for Shidaikeji were swabbed for coronavirus by the Philippine Red Cross - thought to be the first time that Chinese Pogo workers have officially been tested. Despite their numbers and the fact that some came from Wuhan, no Pogo worker has ever tested positive for Covid-19, according to Department of Health records.

Following the raid in Clark Freeport, Dennis Pineda, the provincial governor of Pampanga where the zone is located, has urged authorities to “look for other reported similar illegal facilities” inside the hub for Pogo service providers.

Jailed opposition senator Leila De Lima issued a statement on Wednesday blaming Vince Dizon, chief implementer of the government’s pandemic response for the existence of clandestine medical facilities in the Clark Freeport. She described Dizon, who is the acting chair of Clark Development Corporation and could not be reached for comment for this article, as the “mass testing czar and king of Clark”.

“By hosting the illegal Pogo Covid-19 hospital and the warehouse of illegal Chinese medicines inside Clark, Mass Testing Czar Vince Dizon is actually endangering the public health within his territory,” De Lima said. “This government never ceases to be so horrendous and diabolical in their treason to the Filipino nation.”

The Philippines saw its biggest spike in coronavirus cases on Thursday with 539 new infections – bringing the total to 15,588 with 921 deaths – on the same day that a panel recommended the president ease one of the toughest and longest lockdowns in the world for residents in the capital Manila.

Additional reporting by Reuters