ILOILO City – A second personnel of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) Region 6 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
This jail officer is now in isolation at the Western Visayas Sanitarium in Santa Barbara, Iloilo.
He was one of the 91 BJMP-6 personnel classified as persons under monitoring right after the regional jail bureau recorded its first COVID-19 case on April 26; they were immediately put on a 14-day quarantine beginning April 28.
According to Jail Senior Superintendent Gilbert Peremne, BJMP-6 assistant director for administration, specimens for testing were extracted from the second jail officer on May 12, the day the 14-day quarantine ended.
The 90 other BJMP-6 personnel would undergo tests, too, on May 20.
“If the results of their tests are all negative for COVID-19, they would be turning to work,” said Peremne.
The first BJMP-6 personnel to test positive for COVID-19was part of the 20 frontline jail officers subjected to testing on April 20.
Peremne assured the people of Western Visayas that the bureau was continuously monitoring the health of all inmates in the region.
There is not a single COVID-19 case among inmates so far, he stressed.
BJMP, an attached agency of the Department of Interior and Local Government, supervises the administration and operation of all district, city and municipal jails.
The first COVID-19-positive BJMP-6 personnel, 31 years old and assigned as the regional office’s driver, was asymptomatic and immediately placed at the isolation facility in his hometown, Zarraga, Iloilo.
“Wala ina sia naka-travel to other places. Even before the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine in Iloilo, naka-lockdown ahead kami tanan nga BJMP personnel as a precautionary measure,” stressed Peremne.
People can catch COVID-19 from others who have the virus. The disease can spread from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth which are spread when a person with COVID-19 coughs or exhales./PN
