WHO wants mild COVID-19 patients in isolation facilities

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients with mild or are showing no symptoms should quarantine in the designated isolation facilities to better ensure that they would not infect their loved ones or their community.

WHO Philippines representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe pointed out that for mild and asymptomatic patients to properly quarantine at home, they should be staying in a house where there is enough space for them to observe physical distancing and where there is no one they can pose a risk to, such as those with comorbidities or the elderly.

“If you don’t follow this, there’s always the possibility of having other people in the household being infected, which we’ve seen in many places where people have opted to go for home isolation and quarantine and that has subsequently resulted in many other cases being reported from those households,” Abeyasinghe said.

Earlier, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said mild and asymptomatic patients should not undergo quarantine at home but in the temporary treatment and monitoring facilities. The cochair of the Interagency Task Force (IATF) for the Managment of Emerging Infectious Diseases noted that there’s a “bigger danger” for these patients quarantining at home of infecting their family members.

The Department of Health clarified that home quarantine may still be done, provided that the patient has his own room and bath, will not interact with his family and will be monitored properly by barangay health-workers.

“Essentially, the goal of course is to reduce the risk of community transmission and we do this by making sure that confirmed cases are isolated and not in contact with anyone else in the community,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.

With the IATF now discouraging home-based quarantine, authorities will be going house-to-house to transfer COVID-19 patients from their homes to government isolation facilities.

The move is part of the newly-launched “Oplan Kalinga,” a program which escorts COVID-19 patients from their houses to designated government isolation facilities.

“We don’t want our positive [patients] to undergo home quarantine if their houses do not have the capacity [for isolation],” Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said at a press briefing on Tuesday. INQ