President Rodrigo Duterte said the government is calibrating its move on the deployment of medical professionals abroad.

In a taped televised message on Monday night, Duterte said that the deployment ban for Filipino health workers with existing contracts abroad is now lifted.

"Those who have perfected contract, there is already the contract signed, the nurses, the doctors and other healthcare professionals who signed contract with employers abroad this year would now be allowed to leave," he said.

"Others, please wait for a while, we're just calibrating your deployment because we also need people," Duterte said.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, in a virtual press briefing on Monday, said those who are allowed to leave are health professionals who have complete documents as of August 31. He said there were about 1,500 of them.

But the group of Filipino nurses have continuously urging the government for the total lifting of deployment ban on healthcare workers.

Duterte said he did not want to offend the healthcare workers for his decision.

"This is not really to offend those health workers of ours, doctors, nurses who want to go abroad to earn good money. I do not have anything against you, but I hope others will have the spirit and the fervor to serve the Filipino people because we also need help and we have a crisis also to deal with," Duterte explained.

The government has started imposing the ban on the deployment of healthcare workers abroad last March when the Philippines continued to record cases of coronavirus disease.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, Roque said Duterte's statement was clear regarding his decision not to totally lift the deployment ban of medical professionals.

"While we still have the state of calamity because of COVID-19, it will be difficult to lift that ban. And while the nurses want to go to countries where there are more (COVID-19) cases, the President will continue to protect the health of our frontliners," he said.

At the same time, Roque said the Palace welcomes the move of Deputy Speaker Paolo Duterte to file a bill seeking to increase the salary of nurses in the private sector to make it at par with their counterparts in public hospitals.

He said there is really a need to raise the salary of private hospital nurses.

But the spokesman said he was not sure if the bill filed by the presidential son could be certified as urgent by Duterte. Celerina Monte/DMS