COVID-19 continues to stalk PNP, claims 56th fatality

MANILA, Philippines—The COVID-19 death toll in the Philippine National Police (PNP) continued to spiral and is now 56.

A 50-year-old lieutenant from Calabarzon was the new fatality, PNP chief Gen. Debold Sinas said in a statement on Friday (April 30).

The policeman, who has comorbidity or preexisting condition that raises COVID-19 mortality, showed symptoms a week after getting his first injection of Coronavac, the coronavirus vaccine made by Chinese company Sinovac. He tested positive for SARS Cov2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, after that.

Last April 15, the lieutenant was admitted in a hospital in Batangas province, where his oxygen saturation “continued to plummet at critical levels.”

He was scheduled to undergo hemoperfusion, a process of filtering the blood to remove toxins, as a COVID-19 treatment on Thursday (April 28) but was put on the waiting list of different hospitals as these were already full. He died the next day.

Sinas extended his condolences to the family of the policeman.

As of April 29, the PNP recorded a total of 147 new cases. It has an overall record of 20,150 cases, with 1,722 of these remaining active. There were 198 new recoveries, with 18,372 in total.

TSB