GSIS closes Pasay, QC offices after employee tests positive for COVID-19

After one of its employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the state-run pension fund Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) announced on Monday that it was shutting down its main office in Pasay City and branch office in Quezon City until April 15.

“The female employee had a travel history to Japan, and she started manifesting symptoms on March 7. She was admitted at San Juan de Dios Hospital on March 11, where lab tests subsequently showed that she was indeed positive for the COVID-19 virus,” GSIS President and General Manager Rolando Macasaet said in a statement.Macasaet did not say if the employee, whom he did not identify, was already included in the Department of Health’s tally of confirmed cases.

“We are in the process of contact tracing. The subject employee already gave us the list of persons with whom she had close physical contact from March 7 to 11. We have also started notifying the persons on the list and we advised them to self-quarantine and report to us if they are experiencing symptoms,” added Macasaet, who was also undergoing self-quarantine because he “had close physical contact with several of the individuals listed down by the employee.”

“I feel well and am not showing symptoms. But just as a precautionary measure, I had myself tested for COVID-19 and while waiting for the results, I am placing myself on self-quarantine for the time being,” he said.

“Despite the lockdown, the GSIS head office in Pasay and its branch in Quezon City will continue to operate and will be manned by a skeletal workforce on rotational duty,” Macasaet said.

Work was also suspended in the GSIS’ branch offices in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities because several employees had undergone testing after experiencing symptoms.

Macasaet said that all other branches and extension offices would remain open.

The Social Security System said in a separate statement on Monday that it “[would] form a skeletal workforce in all of its branches in Metro Manila. INQ