Cayetano: It’s up to experts to say when to turn PH Arena into quarantine area

House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano. FILE PHOTO

UPDATED @ 11:37 p.m., April 4, 2020

MANILA, Philippines — House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano favors turning into quarantine facilities for COVID-19 patients places like the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan. But he stressed that scientists and other experts would have to first study health protocols and circumstances before approving such a move.

Cayetano stressed his favoring the use of available structures as quarantine areas in an email to INQUIRER.net.

Earlier, in a virtual press conference, he said that, without medical advice and protocols, facilities not specifically designed for medical use might pose a danger to patients and health workers.

That was his answer when asked if he would propose to the government task force that the arena could be used as a quarantine facility for symptomatic patients monitored for possible infection of coronavirus disease.

“If we say that all the patients with symptoms are sick, but that’s not in the protocols, and if the testing procedure has not yet been put into place and one of the patients there turned out to be positive, it might endanger all patients and other health workers,” he said, speaking partly in Filipino.

Turning other structures into quarantine facilities, he added, would only take place “until the time that our medical scientists and experts say that they need [those facilities] and what conditions have to be present.”

Cayetano cited protocols that were set even when Filipino repatriates were placed under self-isolation in Athlete’s Village in New Clark City of Capas, Tarlac province.

Previously, the government said it would turn the Philippine Arena as a mega-quarantine facility for coronavirus disease patients.

Edited by JPV/ATM