THE 35-year-old man who hailed from Liloan, Cebu and was found positive for the B.1.1.7 variant of the Covid-19 virus in Manila has been tracked down in Quezon City.
Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte said the man and another individual have been staying in an apartment in Riverside in Barangay Commonwealth since January 21, 2021, three days after his swab test result came out positive for Sars-CoV-2.
The patient and his companion are scheduled to be transferred to the Hope Facility Thursday, February 11.
Belmonte said she was seeking legal advice to determine the liability of the manning agency that facilitated the patient’s transfer to the Riverside apartment after he tested positive.
“This agency placed an entire community at risk by bringing a Covid-19 positive patient to our city, considering that both their agency and the quarantine hotel are in Manila,” she said.
Belmonte said the Quezon City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (Cesu) will conduct contact tracing and testing in Riverside.
“We want to make sure that nobody was infected with Covid-19, especially by the much more contagious B.1.1.7 variant. We are acting very quickly to isolate the two, and to conduct extensive contact tracing and testing in the area. It is unfortunate that we learned about this only now,” Belmonte said.
Belmonte said the Cesu learned about the case only on Wednesday, February 10, five days after the Department of Health (DOH) announced eight additional cases of B.1.1.7 infection. The new cases included this Liloan resident.
The patient is an overseas Filipino worker who arrived from South Korea in August 2020 and went home to his residence in Liloan, Cebu.
In November 2020, he traveled to the capital to apply for another overseas job and stayed at a hotel in Manila. His manning agency holds office in Malate, Manila.
On January 17, 2021, he underwent swab testing in a hotel in Manila to comply with placement requirements.
On January 18, his test results came out positive for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
His swab specimen was sent to the University of the Philippines Philippine Genome Center for genome sequencing.
On January 21, his agency booked a ride via a ride-hailing app and transferred him and another person to the apartment in Riverside.
Belmonte appealed to the Bureau of Quarantine to determine why the hotel released the patient to the agency after he tested positive for the virus.
The eight new cases brought to 25 the total number of B.1.1.7 variant infections in the Philippines.
The B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom, has been reported to be more contagious than the prevailing dominant version of the virus. (Third Anne Peralta-Malonzo / SunStar Philippines)