BACOLOD City – The number of patients under investigation (PUIs) for possible 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in this city has risen to six, a City Health Office report showed.
CHO Environment and Sanitation Division head Grace Tan, spokesperson of the city’s inter-agency task force against the 2019-nCoV, said they recorded six PUIs as of Thursday and they are now placed under quarantine in various hospitals.
Tan however did not disclose the name of the hospitals.
The latest PUIs, she said, were a 45-year-old female from China and a 29-year-old female that traveled from Macau and Hongkong. Both of them developed flu-like symptoms few days after they arrived in Bacolod.
Meanwhile, a PUI from La Castellana town has voluntarily asked to be confined and was brought at the Teresita Jalandoni Provincial Hospital in Silay City, Negros Occidental.
Rayfrando Diaz, Provincial Administrator of Negros Occidental, revealed that the patient asked health officials that he will be fetched from his house to the hospital yesterday.
“The patient has flu-like symptoms of nCoV including sore throat and he has stayed in Hongkong for nine hours. The symptoms manifested after he arrived in the country,”Diaz said.
At present, Diaz aid the provincial hospital now has two rooms for the quarantine of possible nCoV PUIs.
He also noted that there are four nurses from the Calatrava District Hospitals will be transferred to the provincial hospital and will be assigned at the isolation rooms.
“The province now is on heightened alert because of possible increase of PUIs and we are taking precautionary measures,” Diaz said.
He said that three other hospitals are being readied in case the nCoV cases increase and the problem is the staffing to meet the demand.
The hospitals are in Kabankalan City, Valladolid and Cadiz City.
Earlier, a 43-year-old Canadian national was discharged in a government hospital here on Feb. 5, after his confirmatory testing result from the research Institute for Tropical Medicine tested negative for nCov./PN
