Contact tracing being conducted at the Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila after several of its personnel tested positive for the coronavirus will not take long, the Department of Health assured Monday.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online forum that operations at Fabella “needs to temporarily stop” to give way to the contact tracing within the hospital “which happens to all settings” once a chain of transmission is found.

“This is not going to be for long. We are just completing the process to prevent further infection. We don’t want patients to get infected because our healthcare workers are infected as well,” Vergeire said.

She said that the public should not worry if this happens to a health institution as they are doing zoning and coordinating with other hospitals to cover those patients who cannot be accommodated by the national maternity hospital.

“We do not want the infection to further spread that’s why they have to temporarily stop admitting at the emergency. Although if there are emergency cases that need to be addressed, there is an assigned unit that can handle it,” Vergeire said.

Eleven of Fabella’s personnel were detected to be positive for the coronavirus disease recently.

The Health official said the hospital director reported that the virus came from a doctor on duty. When the healthcare worker was found positive of the disease, an extensive contact tracing followed, resulting in the discovery of other infected personnel.