Albay logs 4 Covid-19 cases in evacuation centers

THE Albay Provincial Health Office on Monday recorded a new case of Covid-19 in an evacuation center, bringing to four the total number of confirmed cases.

Jan Edmund Dominic Bailon, Albay provincial epidemiology and surveillance unit chief, said the fourth confirmed case is a 51-year-old female evacuee at San Jose National High School in Malilipot.

"The three confirmed Covid-19 cases were all from Matnog, Daraga staying in Gabawan Elementary School in Daraga town. The fourth case is from Malilipot town," Bailon said in an interview.

He said they already isolated the fourth case, who was experiencing sore throat.

Bailon also said they have conducted a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test on 23 close contacts of the latest Covid-19 case.

Meanwhile, the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Bicol Region (DSWD-5) is ready for the second wave of the family food packs distribution for families affected by the continuing unrest of Mayon Volcano.

"Starting July 2, DSWD will again provide family food packs to the affected families through the local government units (LGUs) within the next 15 days. The directive of DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian is to provide enough food for the evacuees," said DSWD-5 Director Norman Laurio in a press conference.

He said the expiration dates of all the food items given to the evacuation centers were indicated.

“I assure you that we will not give or distribute food items already beyond the expiration date. Two months before the expiration of the items, these are used for the food for work program. We have in our records that the food items will expire on March 2024 and our non-food items are all safe," he added.

Laurio said that aside from the replenishment of family food packs from the DSWD central office, daily repacking is also being conducted in different warehouses in Albay with more than PHP65.8 million worth of assistance given to the affected LGUs.

Some 142,008 family food packs and 51,358 non-food items are in 47 LGUs and DSWD warehouses in six provinces in the region.

Based on the record of DSWD-5, there are 5,354 families or 18,706 individuals in 28 evacuation centers, while 408 families or 1,428 individuals were outside evacuation centers or staying with relatives as of Monday.

Aside from monitoring and interventions for the Mayon-affected families, other DSWD programs and services are available to the public.

"For our Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program, as of June 2023, we already provided cash grants to 333,794 households with PHP1.39 billion disbursed funds," Laurio said.

At least 70 out of the 139 centenarians in the region already received their cash benefits.

As for the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations, we already served 87,075 beneficiaries or PHP459 million total cost. These AICS grants were given for burial, educational, food, medical, transportation and other cash assistance," Laurio added. (PNA)