Several Lucena village offices closed for swab tests

LUCENA CITY –– Several barangay offices in Lucena had temporarily closed their doors to conduct swab tests to village officials and workers with symptoms or imposed home isolation to others.

Dr. Grace Santiago, head of the Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO), partly blamed the sudden rise of COVID-19 cases under general community quarantine status to the loose implementation of safety protocols in the city.

“Motorcycles still have back riders. Lots don’t have face masks and standbys still chatting. We cannot say that if all the cases had been cleared and recovered, Quezon is COVID-19-free,” she explained.

“Sad to say, under our general community quarantine our confirmed cases are increasing. Though, this is only a small portion,” Santiago said.

But she quickly clarified that the number of local patients, who were tested negative of SARS-CoV-2, surpassed the number of those tested positive, without providing any figure.

Santiago attributed the quick turnaround of laboratory test results to the province’s first “biosafety level 2 plus” (BSL-2+) molecular diagnostic laboratory located in this city. The laboratory started operation last week.

She also reported that the provincial government also purchased stocks of swab test kits for the immediate testing of suspected COVID-19 patients and their close contacts.

The province has five new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), according to the 8 a.m. bulletin of the Quezon public information office (QPIO) on Thursday.

Lucena City, logged five new COVID-cases, bringing the total number of active virus carriers in the city to 10.

The City has recorded 39 COVID-19 cases since the virus broke out in the country, but 29 have since recovered, according to the city health office on May 20.

The province has 94 COVID-19 cases, with 68 recovering, according to IPHO. Eight of these had died.

Santiago disclosed that the five latest cases in Lucena City, one of them a health care worker in a private hospital, were exposed to patients with COVID-19.

LZB