BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – All 17 personnel of the Negros Occidental Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (PDRRMO) who had close contact with a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-infected ambulance driver tested negative for the viral disease.
These PDRRMO staff – including their head, Dr. Zeaphard Caelian – were allowed to leave the provincial quarantine facility at the Mambukal Resort in Murcia town following the release of their reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test results, according to Provincial Administrator Atty. Rayfrando Diaz II.
Diaz said they wanted to make sure that these PDRRMO staff were all in good condition since their services are important, citing the expiration of the moratorium on the arrival of locally stranded individuals (LSIs) in the province.
PDRRMO’s operation was earlier suspended after one of their staff in Murcia tested positive for the virus last Friday.
The new case – also the province’s Patient No. 105 – was a 47-year-old ambulance driver.
The patient was considered as the province’s first case of local COVID-19 transmission.
He was part of the latest cases that the Department of Health Region 6 confirmed on July 3.
“Yes, we have Patient No. 105, a frontliner of PDRRMO who would drive for LSIs and overseas Filipino workers,” Lacson said, adding contact tracing was immediately launched.
Local transmission, as defined by the World Health Organization, indicates that the source of infection is within the reporting location.
Mayor Gerry Rojas of Murcia town ordered the lockdown of 120 houses in Purok New Site, Barangay Minoyan where the driver currently resides./PN
