BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong announced that Baguio City was one of the places visited by one of the confirmed Coronavirus Disease (COVID) cases in the country and that the city remains to be free from the deadly virus despite the aforesaid visit.
The local chief executive stated that the 24-year old female employee of a government-owned and controlled corporation manifested mild symptoms of the deadly virus before coming up to the city to attend a seminar in one of the famous hotels in the city last March 9-11, 2020 to correct earlier reports on the alleged confirmed COVID case in the city.
However, when she and his fellow workers went back to Metro Manila, she was constrained to undergo a medical checkup at the San Juan de Dios hospital due to persistent occasional cough.
Based on the initial interviews done on her by health experts, the confirmatory test results that she was positive of COVID was released to her by the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) on March 15, 2020 where she reported the matter to her mother agency.
On February 16-25, 2020, the confirmed COVID case from Parañaque reportedly travelled to Hiroshima, Japan but she was asymptomatic when she arrived in the country.
On March 7-8, 2020, she had occasional cough with no fever that is why she was not tested to have fever by the thermal scanner and was still able to join the trip of his agency and attend the 3-day seminar of his agency in the city.
The city mayor claimed that the hotel management already implemented the appropriate measures to dis-infect the hotel rooms that were used by the seminar participants aside from the food and beverage area, comfort rooms and other public places in the said establishment.
The confirmed COVID case had 5 close contacts with the hotel staff who are now undergoing self-quarantine for the next 14 days and that aggressive contact tracing is now being done for her close contacts in the various establishments in the city where she was said to have visited, including a number of famous restaurants and souvenir shops, as well as the city public market.
The Cordillera remains to have only one confirmed COVID case who is a 39-year old seaman from Manabo, Abra and that the earlier reported case from Baguio city is actually not a case from the city considering that she was a confirmed case from Paranaque. By HENT