Baguio woman who died in March was COVID-19 infected

BAGUIO CITY — A woman who died on March 19, but has been classified as a “presumptive” coronavirus disease (COVID-19) by Mayor Benjamin Magalong despite her delayed test results, is now officially a carrier and a Baguio fatality.

No details have been released about the 55-year-old woman. But sources claim she was a government employee, who resumed work after returning from a COVID-19 infected area, before she succumbed to respiratory complications triggered by the virus.

She was cremated hours after her death, following protocols, but has now officially raised the city’s number of infections to 14 when the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine finally released her results this weekend.

As of Sunday (April 5), Baguio doctors are treating 8 patients in a hospital, four of them residents of Metro Manila. But five other patients have recovered, and some of them have been recuperating at their residences.

No new cases have been recorded for the past five to seven days, an indication that the city quarantine may have flattened the statistical curve of COVID-19 transmissions, but the city government cautioned doctors against making that conclusion until every person who has had contact with the patients has been cleared of the disease.

Quoting Dr. Rowena Galpo, city health services officer, the city public information office said the deceased patient tested positive at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center which is one of five regional facilities capable of determining COVID-19 infections.

But the system set up by the Department of Health requires these tests to be validated by the RITM. The same system requires confirmation before epidemiologists launch the process of contact tracing.

Arguing that this was a gap in the quarantine system, Magalong in March directed the city’s epidemiology team to seek out and isolate the people with whom the deceased patient had interacted despite her delayed confirmatory results.

AU