DIGOS CITY –– Davao Occidental province reported its first case of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) after a 65-year old woman from one of its town died at the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) on Monday.
Prince Paraiso, health education and promotion officer of the Davao Occidental provincial health office, told the Inquirer by phone that the patient, who had no history of travel, was admitted at SPMC on Friday, May 1, but died of hypertension and acute cardioembolic stroke at 1:25 pm on Monday, May 4.
Paraiso said the test results confirming the patient positive for COVID-19 came out on Monday night.
Davao Occidental Governor Claude Bautista ordered health authorities in the province to immediately start contact tracing.
Although the patient had no history of travel outside the place where she lived, Paraiso said they would try to track down persons who may have had earlier contacts with her.
“We will start contact tracing today as (ordered by) Governor Bautista during our meeting,” Paraiso said.
He said health workers would take rapid diagnostic tests from the victim’s family, relatives, and other people who had been in close contact with the patient.
“We will quarantine those who had close contact with her and conduct swabbing. We’ll try to trace all those who came in close contact with her,” he said.
Paraiso said they would also check if the patient had been visited by someone who had gone to the cockfighting derby at the New Matina Galleria in Davao City in March, as the event had caused a cluster of infection in neighboring provinces.
But the province awaits the Department of Health for advice on whether to revert to enhanced community quarantine from general community quarantine to control the spread of the disease.
Paraiso urged the public not to panic. He said the province had started random testing in the villages of Malita town, the capital of Davao Occidental, to find out which part of the population already had the infection.