BACOLOD CITY – A female stowaway from this city was stopped at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) a few minutes before she could leave the country last Friday.
Retired Major General Mel Feliciano, Inter-Agency Task Force Visayas chief implementer, said the stowaway was an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) bound for Dammam City, Saudi Arabia.
She was supposed to fly at 1 p.m. on the same day she was intercepted.
The Bacolod City Emergency Operations Center Task Force (EOC-TF) found out upon contact tracing that the OFW boarded a plane from Bacolod to Manila after she tested positive for COVID-19 on her fifth swab test conducted on September 29, the result of which she learned on October 1.
Feliciano immediately coordinated with the National Inter-Agency Task Force (NIATF) against COVID-19 to locate her for eventual extraction.
When found by the authorities, the Bacoleña OFW peacefully submitted herself to the officers, Feliciano said.
“She was consistently negative in her four swabs, yet yielded positive in her fifth. It was unfortunate that before her awaited flight going out of the country, she was infected. Let this be an example to educate people that one breach of health protocols can lead to infection,” he was.
The woman was placed in a quarantine facility in Manila.