MANILA, Philippines — A total of 311 persons who have had close contacts with the country’s three confirmed cases of the COVID-19 infection have completed their 14-day home quarantine and have not shown signs of infection.
Dr. Maria Rosario Vergeire, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health (DOH), said that as of Friday, 218 of the 277 contacts of the first two cases—the Chinese couple from Wuhan in China’s Hubei province — who have been interviewed by the DOH have completed the quarantine period.
Another 15 are still doing home quarantine, while 44 have been admitted as patients under investigation (PUIs) and are now in isolation in different hospitals, the DOH said.
For the third confirmed case—the 60-year-old Chinese woman who already flew back to China—255 of the 740 contacts were already traced by the DOH Epidemiology Bureau and by the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.
Currently, 172 of these contacts have been interviewed. Ninety-three of them have completed their home quarantine while 62 are still in isolation in their homes. Seventeen of the contacts have shown signs of the virus and are admitted as PUIs.
This brings the number of close contacts of the three confirmed cases who were admitted as PUIs to 61, a bit higher than the previous 59 that was reported on Wednesday by the DOH.
READ: 59 who had close contacts with 3 COVID-19 patients show signs of infection
Nationwide, the health department has recorded a total of 455 patients under investigation for the coronavirus disease, which has killed nearly 1,500 individuals all in mainland China except three in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan, and had infected more than 60,000 in at least 25 countries. The vast majority of cases were recorded in China where the virus broke out.
READ: DOH: 455 patients monitored for COVID-19, so far