ILOILO City – All the 45 specimens taken from suspected and probable cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, announced the Department of Health (DOH) Region 6 yesterday.
This was the third consecutive day that Western Visayas recorded no new COVID-19 cases.
The tests were conducted at the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC) in Mandurriao district here.
In COVID-19 Case Bulletin No. 20, DOH-6 stated that the region’s confirmed COVID-19 cases remained at 40.
Of these cases, 12 remained in hospitals while 14 were on home quarantine. Seven recovered from the illness while seven died.
COVID-19 cases in Iloilo province remained at 15; Bacolod City, seven; Aklan, seven; Iloilo City, five; Capiz, four; Antique, two; and Negros Occidental, one.
The island province of Guimaras remained free from COVID-19.
According to Dr. Ma. Sophia Pulmones, DOH-6 spokesperson, the WVMC subnational laboratory hads so far tested or ran a total of 1,517 specimens since it started operating late last month.
Out of these tested specimens, 1,344 were
negative of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus while 37 were positive.
Pulmones said the WVMC testing laboratory recently recalibrated its Polymerase
Chain Reaction machines to ensure quality testing.
“Ini nga procedure gina-obra regularly sang aton mga laboratories to ensure nga quality ang ginapagwa nila nga results. Ikaduha, may gin-recommend nga bag-o nga testing procedure or protocol ang Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) kon sa diin ginsunod ina sang aton subnational reference laboratory,” said Pulmones.
She also said the WVMC testing laboratory is using new testing kits.
“Kon bag-o ang test kits, they have to do parallel testing to ensure the quality of the test results. Pagkatapos ang result sang parallel testing gina-submit sa RITM for validation,” said Pulmones.
To further widen mass testing for COVID-19, DOH on April 13 started adopting new “surveillance definitions” in the reporting of cases that for several weeks it had been calling as persons under investigation (PUI), persons under investigation (PUM) and positive cases.
DOH has now transitioned to three new terms: “suspect case”, “probable case” and “confirmed case”.
A “confirmed case” is “any individual, irrespective of presence or absence of clinical signs and symptoms, who was laboratory-confirmed for COVID-19 in a test conducted at the national reference laboratory, a subnational reference laboratory, and/or officially accredited laboratory testing facility.”
A “probable case” is a suspect case who fulfills anyone of the following:
* a suspect case whom testing for COVID-19 is inconclusive
* suspect who underwent testing for COVID-19 but not conducted in a national or subnational reference laboratory or officially accredited laboratory for COVID-19 confirmatory testing
* suspect case for whom testing could not be performed for any reason
A “suspect case” is a person who is presenting with any of the conditions:
* all SARI (severe acute respiratory infection) cases where no other etiology fully explains the clinical presentation
* ILI (influenza-like illness) cases with any one of the following: with no other etiology that fully explains the clinical presentation and a history of travel to or residence in an area that reported local transmission of COVID-19 disease during the 14 days prior to symptom onset, or with contact to a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 during the 14 days prior to the onset of symptoms
* individuals with fever or cough or shortness of breath or other respiratory signs or symptoms fulfilling any one of the following conditions: aged 60 years and above; with a comorbidity; assessed as having a high-risk pregnancy; health worker./PN
