AFTER roughly two months of having no coronavirus disease (Covid-19) positive case, the Province of Davao Oriental recently recorded 12 new Covid-19 positive cases where the majority arrived from Manila.
Davao Oriental Provincial Hospital (DOPH) acting health officer Reden Bersaldo said eight of the 12 individuals who tested positive for coronavirus were overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and locally-stranded beneficiaries of the Balik Probinsya Program.
He said they were fetched from Manila.
Bersaldo said the part of the health safety protocols being implemented by the province was to test all the arriving OFWs and locally-stranded persons with Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RTPCR) and be quarantined in their facilities.
"Direcho gyud na sila dayon sa community quarantine center maskin na og naka quarantine na sila daan sa Manila ug muingon sila nga naa silay negative RT PCR result (They will be sent to the community quarantine center even if they have already been quarantined in Manila or if they have negative RT PCR result)," he said.
Bersaldo said one of them who arrived on May 30 was not immediately swabbed because the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) ran out of extraction kits. The person was also put under home quarantine.
"Nakasend mi og iyang specimen Day 13 sa iyang quarantine," he said.
Meanwhile, the DOPH tested the seven remaining OFWs as soon as they arrived on May 26 and their test result came out positive of the Sars-CoV-2. However, all of them were asymptomatic.
The four more Covid-19 positive individuals were residents of Banay-Banay town who went to Maguindanao to attend the burial.
After knowing that their driver reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, Bersaldo said they decided to do a swab test and isolated the four individuals. Their test results revealed they are also positive for Covid-19.
Bersaldo said they have already intensified their contact-tracing since some of the positive cases either have traveled and some undergone home quarantine.
Recently, a doctor at Davao Oriental Provincial Medical Center tested positive for coronavirus. As of June 1, Davao Oriental recorded a total of 15 Covid-19 cases.