130 contacts of Ilocos Norte’s 1st UK variant case test negative for COVID-19

LAOAG CITY –– All 130 close contacts of the lone UK variant case of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ilocos Norte have tested negative for the virus, health officials said on Tuesday, Feb. 23.

The UK variant patient, tagged by the provincial government as “C-19-UK-1”, arrived in the country from Bahrain on Jan. 23 and completed a 14-day mandatory quarantine in a facility in Malate, Metro Manila.

A health task force formed by the provincial government had traced and tested last week all the people who came in contact with the 46-year-old-man who returned to Ilocos Norte on Feb. 8, said Dr. Norman Rabago, provincial health consultant.

In a press briefing, Rabago said all of the patient’s primary and secondary generation contacts would be released from the mandatory 14-day quarantine on Feb. 24.

But he confirmed an earlier report that a 38-year-old man from Barangay Gabu Norte here, who was one of the identified third-generation contacts of C-19-UK-1, had tested positive for COVID-19.

“There is a low probability that the case could have been actually exposed to the UK variant case of the province,” Rabago said, adding that the contact’s specimen was still forwarded to the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) last week for confirmation of the presence of the new variant.

The result has yet to be released by PGC, Rabago said.

Among the latest people to be infected with COVID-19 in the province as of Feb. 23 were employees of a bank and the provincial capitol, a tricycle driver, and locally stranded individuals.

The province so far has recorded a total of 775 COVID-19 cases, 30 of them active. INQ

LZB