Pangasinan town logs 1st UK variant case

DAGUPAN CITY –– A resident of Umingan town in Pangasinan has tested positive for the UK variant (B117) of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), officials said.

The patient is the first known UK variant case in Umingan and the third in the province.

Umingan Mayor Michael Carleone Cruz announced this after the release of the result on a test done on the patient he identified only as Umingan Case 35.

Cruz said the genome sequencing of the sample taken from the patient was done at the University of the Philippines -Philippines Genome Center on March 3.

The result was released to the Department of Health on March 19.

The patient, a 58-year-old woman, used to be the caregiver of another patient, who recently died due to COVID-19, the Inquirer learned.

It was not immediately known if the fatality was also infected with the UK variant.

Dr. Anna de Guzman, provincial health officer, said the first patient who had a UK variant in Pangasinan was a 27-year-old male overseas Filipino worker from Dubai.

He was quarantined for 14 days in Metro Manila, but allowed to return to Urdaneta City when he tested negative for the virus in January.

But on March 5, the result of his whole genome sequencing showed that he had contracted the UK variant.

The second UK variant patient is a 65-year-old woman from San Nicolas town who tested positive for the UK variant on March 12.

LZB