Close to 2,500 Filipinos abroad have contracted the dreaded COVID-19, Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Lou Arriola told congressmen Friday.
In a virtual hearing by the House Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs, Arriola said that a total of 2,461 COVID-19 cases involving Filipino expatriates have been recorded of as of May 21, 2020.
“We’d just like to caution the members of the Committee that these are overseas Filipinos; we do not have the breakdown of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) because the countries of destination do not give that data because of privacy issues,” she told the panel chaired by TUCP Party-List Rep. Raymond Democrito Mendoza.
Of the cases, over 10 percent or some 285 have died. There 861 recorded recoveries and 1,315 active cases, Arriola said.
A map-graph showed by the DFA official indicated that Europe had the most confirmed cases of COVID-stricken Filipinos, with 752. There are 713 such cases in the Middle East and Africa, 544 in the United States (US), and 452 in Asia and the Pacific.
As far as Filipino deaths from the illness are concerned, the US–the current epicenter of the pandemic–has the most with 149 or more than half of the total fatalities.
Arriola bared that the Middle East and Africa has the most active cases with 566, while Asia and the Pacific has the biggest number of recoveries with 326. (Ellson A. Quismorio)
