BACOLOD City – Home quarantine will no longer be allowed for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) positive patients in this city.
“All positive cases, whether asymptomatic or mild, should be placed in isolation facilities,” Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran, who chairs the City Inter-Agency Task Force against COVID-19, reiterated.
According to Familiaran, local authorities can’t be assured if those patients are really observing the proper protocols of home quarantine.
He said Mayor Evelio Leonardia is set to issue an executive order for this in the coming days.
Familiaran added the local government also intends to transfer all close contacts of an infected patient spending quarantine in their homes to isolation facilities in the city.
He, however, did not divulge the total number of COVID-19 patients and close contacts undergoing home quarantine.
Citing the risk of spreading the novel coronavirus inside the same household, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) recently discouraged home quarantine for mild COVID-19 patients.
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, also the co-chair of IATF-EID, said the dangerous thing about home quarantine is that COVID-19 is contagious.
There will be a greater chance that a patient may infect other members of the family, he added.
The Department of Health allows patients deemed asymptomatic or with mild symptoms to quarantine at home, provided that they have their own room and bath and are monitored by barangay health workers./PN
