The Philippine government has raised to 6,500 the annual deployment ceiling of new hire healthcare workers for mission critical skills, Malacañang said on Friday.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases approved this in a meeting on Thursday.

"HCWs falling under MCS (mission critical skills) with perfected contracts as of May 31, 2021, shall form part of the adjusted ceiling," he said in a statement.

Healthcare workers under government-to-government labor agreements shall, however, be exempted from the adjusted ceiling, said Roque, also the IATF spokesman.

Prior to the latest IATF policy, the government only allowed up to 5,000 the number of healthcare workers who can be deployed abroad to avoid shortage of medical workers in the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The government started to put a cap in the deployment of medical and allied professions shortly after the pandemic outbreak last year. Celerina Monte/DMS