by Hannah Samilin
Students line up to get their temperature checked as classes continue amid coronavirus scare in the Philippines. (PHOTO SOURCE: Daily Tribune)
There are no persons under investigation (PUI) in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) that have tested positive with COVID-19 as of February 24, according to the Department of Health’s (DOH) COVID-19 case tracker.
During a press briefing last February 14, Dr. Amelita M. Pangilinan, OIC-Director IV of DOH CAR, said that the agency stands strongly with their advocacies on street prevention and warns the public that if they are suffering from colds, they should wear masks as a caution.
“Again, we stand firm in our advocacy to observe street prevention, infection, prevention control measure and washing and cough etiquette. And if you have cough and colds and fever, you better use the mask,” Pangilinan said.
Pangilinan also assured close monitoring of the prices and availability of N-95 masks in the region.
“They’re going to monitor it, including the availability. Kasi, we want to prevent profiteering, hoarding, cartels and the like that compromise the accessibility of people to these essential pharmaceutical products,” Pangilinan said.
The Baguio City Health Office (CHO) also took charge to spread awareness about COVID-19 to students in the city.
Dr. Donnabel Tubera-Panes of the CHO held a lecture seminar last January 17 titled, “Epidemiology of COVID-19,” at the University of the Philippines Baguio (UPB) to educate students on the disease and its prevention.
The threats posed by the COVID-19 compelled city officials to postpone the Panagbenga festival in the city.
However, at a Kapihan sa Baguio last February 12, the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. (BFFFI) Executive Chairman Anthony de Leon confirmed that the Panagbenga Festival would be moved to late March.
COVID-19 case nationwide
There have been three confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country, all of which are Chinese from Wuhan, but only one of them, a 44-year old man, has died.
One of the confirmed cases, a 38-year old woman, recovered and was discharged from the San Lazaro Hospital, while the other one, a 60-year old woman, is admitted at a hospital in Bohol.
As of February 24, 12 PM, DOH reported that there is a total of 126 currently admitted PUIs, none of which are confirmed cases, in the country.
According to the DOH’s case tracker, the number of PUIs in the regions affected are:
· CAR: 2 PUIs
· NCR: 105 PUIs
· Ilocos: 1 PUI
· Central Visayas: 2 PUIs
· CALABARZON: 5 PUIs
· Eastern Visayas: 2 PUI
· Cagayan Valley: 1 PUIs
· Bicol: 5 PUIs
- Central Luzon 1 PUI
· Northern Mindanao: 1 PUI
· SOCCSKSARGEN: 1 PUI
(No PUIs are recorded in the Davao region, MIMAROPA, CARAGA, Western Visayas and BARMM as of the time that this is written.)
In a press release on February 14, Health Secretary Francis Duque III expressed their satisfaction with how most of the PUIs in the country tested negative for COVID-19.
“We are glad that most of our PUIs tested negative for 2019-nCoV. While this is very welcome news, we at the DOH will continue our preparations for the possibility of local transmission,” Duque said.
Duque also restated the importance of cleanliness and cough etiquette to keep the risk of the spread of COVID-19 at a press release on February 17.
“We cannot underscore more the importance of regular hand washing and observance of cough etiquette to prevent the spread of the COVID-19,” he said.
Duque added, “I urge all our kababayans to continuously cooperate with the Department of Health to keep the risk of this new disease at bay. Together we can eliminate the threat of COVID-19.”
The DOH has been closely monitoring people who have shown symptoms of the disease that have a history of travel to China.
What is COVID-19?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Corona Virus Disease 19 (COVID-19) is a new strain of coronavirus, which is an umbrella term for a large family of viruses found in both animals and humans.
COVID-19, then called 2019-nCoV, is a respiratory illness that can cause mild symptoms that include a runny nose, sore throat, cough and fever.
The virus is rarely deadly but older people and those with pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or heart diseases, are more likely to be more vulnerable.
In severe cases of COVID-19, the Department of Health (DOH) said that it can “cause pneumonia, acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.”
The incubation period of COVID-19, which is the time between the infection and the start of when clinical symptoms of the disease show, is estimated to range from one to 12.5 days.
Wuhan, China is the ground zero of COVID-19 and earlier reports said that the Huanan Seafood Market, where vendors often slaughter live animals in front of the customers, was where the disease came from.
However, a report published by a group of Chinese scientists in the medical journal The Lancet on January 24 titled, “Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China,” suggested that the virus could have originated from someplace else before entering the seafood market.
According to the report, when looking at the cases of the first 41 people hospitalized with COVID-19, the scientists found that 13 people had no link to the marketplace, including the first person reported to have contracted the virus on December 1.
COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease, meaning they jump from animals to humans and it is suspected that bats are the original hosts of the virus.
Although it is said that bats are the known carriers of COVID-19, according to Arnaud Fontanet, a medical epidemiologist from France’s Pasteur Institute, the virus did not jump from bats to humans.
“We think there’s another animal that’s an intermediary,” Fontanet said in an interview with Agence France-Presse, an international news agency.
The official Xinhua news agency reported that after testing more than 1,000 samples from wild animals, South China Agricultural University scientists found that the genome sequences of viruses in pangolins are 99 percent identical to those on COVID-19 patient.
Edited by Anna Katrine Vitor