The Philippines on Wednesday detected the new coronavirus variant which was initially discovered in Britain.

The Department of Health (DOH) and Philippine Genome Center (PGC) officially confirmed the detection of the new variant in the country after samples from a Filipino who arrived from the United Arab Emirates on January 7 yielded positive genome sequencing results.

The Philippines has imposed a travel ban on more than 30 countries and regions with the new strain in a bid to fend off the new variant.

The southeast Asian country has reported a total of 492,700 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 9,699 deaths.