MANILA - A health expert is not ruling out the possibility of the presence of a new, more transmissible COVID-19 variant in the Philippines, calling on the public to remain vigilant.

"At this point, we haven't detected it but we shouldn't assume that it's not here," said Dr. Edsel Salvaña, a member of the government's Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) technical working group on new coronavirus variants.

"We should still take care and do prerequisite vigilance because even the original virus, even if it's not the variant, can still cause spikes."

• No new COVID variant detected in PH, gene sequencing shows — DOH

This, despite the Department of Health (DOH) statement Wednesday that it has not detected the new coronavirus variant in the country.

This is based on results of gene sequencing from over 300 samples of COVID-19-positive travelers from the United Kingdom and other countries where the new variant had already spread.

"I don't think you can say that it is cleared. All you can say is it's not detected because you're not going to process every single person who is positive. Again, we do purposive sampling in terms of likelihood," said Salvaña, also the director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of the Philippines - National Institutes of Health.

He added, "As far as we're concerned, the samples that we tested, we're not able to detect the new variant. It's also less likely that there's community transmission of this variant but it doesn't mean it's not here."

On Wednesday, the country reported 1,047 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the national tally to 480,737. The number of deaths linked to the virus also reached 9,347.

• Philippines reports 1,047 new COVID-19 cases; total breaches 480,000

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