Tagbilaran City—The Provincial Health Office (PHO) in Bohol on Monday conducted swab testing to 199 individuals who were in close contact with two elderlies who are the earliest recorded coronavirus disease 2019 community transmission cases in the province.
Last Thursday, Governor Arthur Yap received the information about the test results of the two Boholano senior citizens positive of COVID-19 from the Department of Health (DOH-7) Regional Director Jaime Bernadas.
Yap immediately relayed to Tagbilaran City Mayor John Geesnell Yap and Calape Mayor Nelson Yu the test results of their respective constituents.
The governor also relayed the information to the hospital authorities in Tagbilaran City — Dr. Ronald Ramiro, president of Ace Medical Center; and Dr. Mutya Kismet Tirol-Macuno, chief of Governor Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital — as the two patients were admitted at their facilities.
One of the confirmed cases is an 89-year-old male resident of Lawis, a village on Pangangan Island in Calape town.
He was admitted at the Governor Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital around 9 p.m. on May 25 wherein health workers took a swab sample from him. He died due to severe myocardial infarction secondary to community-acquired pneumonia on May 26 and was buried on May 27, within 12 hours after his death as per protocol observed since the onset of coronavirus pandemic.
Last Thursday, the RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) test result came from Cebu which showed he was positive of COVID-19.
On Monday, the municipal health workers of Calape took swab samples from 12 individuals identified to have had close contact with the male elderly. These include the patient’s widow, who is in her 30s, and the family of the patient’s 60-year-old daughter who is a barangay official.
The second community transmission case is a 65-year-old female resident of Purok 2, Barangay Dao in this city, who was admitted to Ace Medical Center on May 25 because of chest pain.
On May 27, a swab sample was taken from her for an RT-PCR test in Cebu City. The result came out on June 4, showing her positive of coronavirus.
Ramiro said the 65-year-old patient from Tagbilaran was “admitted to the negative pressure isolation room for chest pain of two days duration and a day of difficulty in breathing”.
“Patient has a long history of recurrent difficulty in breathing. Patient was managed and cared for by a multi-specialty team of consultants,” Ramiro said.
The number of individuals listed in the contact tracing for the female patient in this city was 187.