13 more inmates from Zamboanga City jail test positive for COVID-19

ZAMBOANGA CITY—They’re only a few steps to freedom, but COVID-19 threatens to keep them away from home again.

Thirteen more inmates of the Zamboanga City Reformatory Center here tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, two days after they left the facility that has been the epicenter of COVID-19 cases in this city.

Sheila Belen Covarrubias, information officer of Zamboanga City Task Force COVID-19, said the 13 new patients were among the 60 inmates about to be released from the jail and who were on a 14-day quarantine before they would be allowed to go home.

On Sunday, May 10, the inmates excitedly packed their belongings to leave the facility.

Clutching their release orders issued by the court, they boarded the facility’s bus which shuttled them off to a hotel on Tomas Claudio Street, where they started the 14-day quarantine.

Dr. Dulce Miravite, the city health officer, said swabs were taken from the inmates to ensure that they were negative for COVID-19 when they would be turned over to their respective barangays. “If tests come out negative, they can go home to their families,” Miravite said.

But on Tuesday night, the test results from the Genexpert Laboratory facility at the Zamboanga City Medical Center came out and 13 of them tested positive for SARS-CoV2, the virus that caused COVID-19, Covarrubias said.

City health personnel immediately separated the 13 from the rest of the inmates and brought them to an undisclosed isolation facility.

The new cases bring to 99 the total COVID-19 cases contracted inside the jail and to 108 the total number of cases in the city.