By Glazyl Masculino
BACOLOD CITY - Mayor Evelio Leonardia announced on Friday, March 27, that the city has recorded three additional confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), bringing the total to four cases here.
Leonardia said that he received the report from the Department of Health (DOH) Region 6 in Iloilo City on Friday afternoon through a phone call.
Leonardia, in a press briefing, said that the patients were all men, aged 28, 40, and 75 years old. “They are recovering, and in complete isolation in the hospitals here," he added.
Based on the record from the DOH-6, the 28-year-old patient is a son of a 56-year-old man who was first tested positive for COVID-19 here, while the two others had travel history to Manila.
A total of 17 persons were already traced in relation to the first confirmed COVID-19 case here. They were all asymptomatic, the DOH-6 reported.
Dr. Grace Tan, spokesperson of the Bacolod Inter-agency Task Force against COVID-19, said that contact tracing was ongoing with regard the three new COVID-19 cases.
Tan said they were looking into those who came in contact with these patients and those who already manifested flu-like symptoms.
Tan reiterated her call to the public to truthfully reveal their travel history, and declare their health condition to aid the authorities in preventing the spread of the infectious disease.
Tan said that they usually do profiling to determine the travel history of the patient, and his activities in the past 14 days, prior his admission to a hospital or manifestation of the symptoms.
“We do not just limit our contact tracing within the locality. We will cross the borders if a positive patient traveled across the sea,” she added.
“This is a virus, it’s supposed to be self-limiting. It doesn’t mean that if you’re tested negative for infection, you won’t get infected. If you do not continue the quarantine, like staying at home, you will still get expose to the virus,” she said.
Meanwhile, Tan said that out of 27 persons under investigation (PUIs) reported since February 2 here, 19 of them have already been discharged from the hospitals, while eight others, including the four COVID-19 patients, were still confined at the different health facilities here.
Tan also said that the 60-year-old male PUI with cancer who died on March 17, while waiting for the results of his swab test, was tested negative for COVID-19.
For persons under monitoring (PUMs), she said that the city has a total of 1,614, and 356 of them had already completed the quarantine.