By Jerry Alcayde
CALAPAN CITY – The one-year, nine-month old girl, who became Oriental Mindoro’s first and only coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patient and the country’s youngest, is now finally out of the woods.
This after Oriental Mindoro Governor Humerlito A. Dolor disclosed that, at about 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 6, he received a notification from the Department of Health (DOH) Regional Office that the third and final laboratory test on the baby, who was also known as Patient 14, turned out negative.
The baby patient was discharged from a private hospital here last Friday after a second test showed that there was no indication that she had the coronavirus.
Under the DOH protocol, a third test of the patient, which is the second that should yield a negative result, would be the determining factor to determine if he or she is truly free of the virus.
As such, Dolor noted that Oriental Mindoro has returned to its former status as a COVID-19 free province.
Baby Patient, a one-year-and-nine-month-old child from Calapan was released from the hospital last April 3 after her doctor completely treated her pneumonia and other symptoms of COVID-19.
The DOH said her record as COVID-19 positive will still be included in the region’s over-all tally of nine positive cases scattered in Marinduque with four cases, Occidental Mindoro, two; Romblon and Palawan with one case each.
The DOH regional office also announced that Occidental Mindoro has the highest number of patients under investigation (PUIs) at 110, majority of which were home quarantined; Palawan has 88; Marinduque, 59; Oriental Mindoro, 52 and Romblon, 33.