MANILA: The Philippines urged its large Muslim minority on Thursday to reconsider plans to perform Haj this year due to MERS fears.

About 6,500 Filipinos who are set to join the annual pilgrimage in October are being urged to go next year instead, when the Middle East respiratory syndrome is expected to be under control, health department spokesman Lyndon Lee Suy said.

“We know it’s a religious custom, but it is also our duty to provide health advisories,” Lee Suy told AFP.

“It’s an appeal for them to delay the trip if possible due to the MERS virus ... If possible, they should go next year.”

While Filipino Muslims customarily seek to undertake the Haj at least once in their lifetimes, Lee Suy said a number of them make it a point to make the pilgrimage every year.

The government consulted Muslim government agencies as well as community leaders before issuing the advisory, Lee Suy said.

“We are strongly recommending and advising our Muslim brothers to defer ... their Haj pilgrimage this year for, maybe, next year,” Health Secretary Enrique Ona told reporters.

Ona said “high-risk groups” like the elderly, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases are especially urged not to make the trip.

Dimapuno Datu-Ramos from the government’s Commission on Muslim Filipinos said those who insist on going needed to secure a medical certificate to show they are fit for the journey.

Ona said that health workers would monitor Filipinos in each of the pilgrimage flights headed to and from Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, infection rates are slowing and scientists hope to know enough in a year or so to be able to stop the dangerous coronavirus from spreading further internationally, a top UN health official said.

Most of the 824 confirmed cases of MERS since 2013, including at least 286 deaths, could have been prevented, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the WHO said.

About 40 percent of the people who became infected have died, he said, calling that “a much higher-than-normal fatality rate” for a virus.